Princess Mary gift tin pipe

[General Gordon]

I have had this pipe in my collection for a number of years it is unsmoked which is unusual but it has been engraved.

The information on the pipe is as follows : Cpl H.S.E 5th Seaforth's, wounded on the 15th June1915 @ Festubert and subsequently arrived at the Army War hospital at Wharncliffe.

After a search on line I found that the regiment only received 30 casualty's on the 15th June 1915 as the attack was called off and that's as far as I got. With a load of records being lost in the last war I had almost given up searching.

During a somewhat boring day awaiting the delivery of a item for my collection I resumed the search and found a news paper article of the time. Strange to think of the time of the article it was for a fatal car accident and the driver was Corporal Harold Ellwood of the Seaforth Highlander's who at the time was a patient at the Wharncliffe hospital. he had been a passenger in the vehicle being driven by a young Lady when she became unwell, he took over the driving to return to the hospital but unfortunately knocked over a pedestrian and he subsequently died.

Strange how history can come alive with trawling the internet!.

 

 

 

 

[Dave66]

Lovely item…great thing to have, always nice to link an object to a person.

You probably have it, but his M.I.C. Is below…Harold Shackel Elwood.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/538493:1262?tid=&pid=&queryId=83c696a0-573d-4e31-8365-ffc4703e2e3e&_phsrc=TgZ5&_phstart=successSource

Dave.

[General Gordon]

No I don't have that information, I will look it up, Thank you

Malc

[Dave66]

Born 1893 and died in 1977,,,,always nice to find a middle name like that, makes research so much easier.

Best of luck,

Dave.

 

[General Gordon]

On 05/02/2024 at 16:49, Dave66 said:

Had to Google that, but absolutely👍👍👍

Hi Dave, Thank you for looking that up. I have just re-joined Ancestry after many years and they still had all my previous searches. I had a look at their hints and I have found a direct link to Sir James Outram he of the defence of the legation in Lucknow. [ Indian Mutiny ]. My day is just getting better!

.

[FROGSMILE]

There’s a memorial website dedicated to Wharnecliffe War Hospital at the following link that contains some evocative photos: http://www.wharncliffewarhospital.co.uk/Features/Gallery/Gallery_4.html

The images give the distinct impression to me of a precursor to the NHS and for many of the men shown that’s how it would have felt, for prewar few of them would ever have been able to afford a hospital visit for treatment other than through a charity.

Another aspect that shouts out at the viewer is the extraordinary effort that clearly went into getting the wounded men, including the bedridden, out into the fresh air on what was clearly a regular basis.  When one visits stuffy and often seemingly overheated hospitals today it feels like the NHS no longer has the staff, or motivation, to get hospital patients outdoors in the same way.  It feels like something precious has been lost.

Edited 9 February by FROGSMILE

[General Gordon]

I agree with your comment to a degree. The NHS is fragmented, Having been treated in Kings college hospital in the last year I could not speak highly enough for the care I received by the overworked staff. Unfortunately not all hospitals are the same and a lot of the time the management are to blame, they must walk around with their eyes shut..

 Thank you for the link, I like you find the photographs interesting it is a shame that they do not have the names of those portrayed, Also it is a shame the list of patients is incomplete.

 

[FROGSMILE]

18 hours ago, General Gordon said:

I agree with your comment to a degree. The NHS is fragmented, Having been treated in Kings college hospital in the last year I could not speak highly enough for the care I received by the overworked staff. Unfortunately not all hospitals are the same and a lot of the time the management are to blame, they must walk around with their eyes shut..

 Thank you for the link, I like you find the photographs interesting it is a shame that they do not have the names of those portrayed, Also it is a shame the list of patients is incomplete.

 

Yes I did find them fascinating.  Being a member of this website over the years I’ve had the chance to look at images from so many wartime hospitals and convalescent homes and was struck by the enormous national effort that was put into returning wounded soldiers to health.  The medical effort was prodigious and on a scale unprecedented at the time.

Examine the sheer scale of the medical estate in early 1918 and it’s very clearly the genesis of an NHS.  Every single hospital also seems to now be represented in photographs and they were obviously places of special interest to a range of different private, charitable, medical, and print media concerns, given the large number of pictures that have survived.

The overwhelming theme that I pick up from so many of these images is that fierce determination to get the men up and out of bed, and on their feet as soon as they were strong enough, and then going on outings.  Generally as mobile as possible and in the fresh air outside the wards.

I don’t think one needs to be scientific to understand how good that effort and policy was for the human soul and psyche and in all of my many visits to see family and friends in NHS wards there is nothing even remotely like it now.

I agree with you that the contemporary NHS has become fragmented, by post codes, with different degrees of resource.  It’s all very depressing when compared with the images of recovering soldiers circa 1914-1918 (I recognise that there were many who did not recover, or who left permanently maimed).

Edited 11 February by FROGSMILE