4. Other Media
BBC/OH
‘Our Heritage: Flora Sandes’, BBC, broadcast 5th August 1965, in the archives of East Anglian Television
BBC/YW
‘Yesterday’s Witness: Mission to Serbia’, BBC2, broadcast 22nd February 1970
MWWI
Šrámek, Josef, ‘Memoirs of the World War I’, www.svobodat.com/sramek/sramek02_eng.html
Notes
Chapter 1
1 FHFC, p. 3.
2 BBC/OH.
3 FHFC, p. 3.
4 I have attempted to ensure that both place and surnames reflect their Serbian spelling. However, where people habitually Anglicized their surnames, I have retained their preferred spelling. Thus, for example, Mabel Grouitch remains “Grouitch” instead of the Serbian “Grujić”.
5 IWM/IFS; ‘Lieut. Flora Sandes’, Australian Bystander, 8th July 1920; ‘The Woman Soldier’, Glen Innes Guardian [Australia], 18th October 1920.
6 DM/HF.
7 LS, p. 13.
8 ‘Credentials from Training School’, ESRC.
9 NYT/NB.
10 FSC/ALN. They were not quite the first to leave British shores to nurse near the front. The first group of women left on 9th August for Belgium. See ‘Active Service’, British Journal of Nursing, 15th August 1914.
11 FSC/ALN; FSC/D, 13th August 1914.
12 The stated number of nurses in the Unit varies according to source. Flora mentions seven in total, Emily eight and Mabel nine. FSC/ALN states that the eighth left to work elsewhere and FSC/D, 7th September 1914, states “Mrs Hartley and Miss Mann went to Hospital XIX”, which almost certainly accounts for the inconsistency.
13 FSC/ALN.
14 FSC/D, 14th, 17th August 1914.
15 SNW/TYE; FSC/D, 17th August 1914.
16 FSC/ALN.
17 The identity of Emily’s father is unknown, although she stated that he was from Aberdeen.
18 Inez Haynes Gillmore Papers 1872–1945, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University [A25].
19 NYT/NB.
20 FSC/D, 17th August 1914.
21 FSC/D, 17th–25th August 1914.
22 DC/DL.
23 FSC/ALN.
24 Mary H. Frances Ivens, ‘The Part Played by British Medical Women in the War’, British Medical Journal, 18th August 1917, p. 205.
25 FSC/ALN; IWM/IFS.
Chapter 2
1 L/NWB.
2 INT/AB; Brian Thompson, Imperial Vanities (London: HarperCollins, 2002), pp.160–66.
3 FSC/BB.
4 FSC/BB.
5John Bull, 13th April 1878, p. 230.
6 See: ‘Bazaar and Fête at Monewden’, Ipswich Journal, 12th July 1884; ‘Marlesford’, Ipswich Journal, 8th July 1887; ‘Marlesford’, Ipswich Journal, 5th January 1888.
7 ‘Monewden: Concert’, Ipswich Journal, 10th January 1882.
8 ‘Monewden’, Ipswich Journal, 27th January 1883.
9History, Gazetteer and Directory of Suffolk (Sheffield: William White Ltd, 1891–92), pp. 547–48.
10 1891 and 1901 census information.
11 Diaries of Mary Baker (née Sandes), FSC.
12 FSC.
13 AWS, p. 9.
14 INT/AB.
15 ‘Letter to the Editor’, Times, 29th August, 22nd September 1891.
16 See William Besnard Sandes’s Discharge Document, War Office: Soldiers’ Documents from Pension Claims, First World War, NAK [Microfilm Publication WO364].
17 Geoffrey Serle et al., eds., Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1988), p. 518; Richard Evans, ‘Reporting “a Mercenary and Inglorious War”: The Argus, the Boer War and Breaker Morant’, in Muriel Porter, ed., The Argus: The Life and Death of a Great Melbourne Newspaper, 1846–1957 (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2003), pp. 139–57.
18 FSC/BB.
19 The 1901 Census lists them both as “correspondents”.
20Local Studies Pack: Thornton Heath, 2nd edn. (Croydon: Croydon Libraries, 1993).
21 Little is known of Flora’s work in London, but in January 1900 she appears to have been employed by the “Colonial Trading Co.” at 130 London Wall. See India Office Records, British Library, London [IOR/L/PJ/6].
22 LET/DSAB.
23 PCL/NY.
24 ‘Typing Round the World’, Pitman’s Phonetic Journal, 19th November 1904.
25 ‘Girl Starts Journey on Foot to San Francisco’, St Louis Republic, 9th August 1904.
26 S/FS.
27 ‘Deaths on Cassiar – Two Occurred While Steamer Was Southbound’, Nanaimo Free Press, 7th December 1904. See also: Margaret A. Ormsby, ed., A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia: The Recollections of Susan Allison (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 1991).
28 LET/DSAB.
29 ‘A First Impression of Van Anda’, Coast Miner [Van Anda, British Columbia], 15th January 1900.
30 ‘Texada Island, the Gem of the Gulf’, Coast Miner [Van Anda, British Columbia], 15th January 1900.
31 LET/DSAB.
32 Flora, by one likely exaggerated account, took “a trip – by bicycle – through Central America [to Panama]… young Dick spending the first part of the journey through the jungle in her bicycle basket.” See CTC, p. 55.
33 LET/DSAB.
34 INT/AB.
35 LET/DSJS.
36 LET/DSAB.
37 S/FS.
38 LET/DSAB. Flora’s name does not appear in Brooklands’ archives. She most likely drove her car around the track when it was open to the public, on non-race days.
39 Letter from Dick Sandes, FSC.
40 S/FS.
41 ‘Correspondence’, Autocar, 9th May 1914.
42 See 1911 Census. At the time it was taken, Nan was staying with Flora and her family in Thornton Heath. See also BBC/OH.
43 BMS/TG, pp. 539, 540; FSC.
44 BMS/TG, p. 541.
45 S/FS.
46 LET/DSAB. See also S/FS.
47 LET/DSAB.
48 S/FS.
49 FSC/LET to unnamed friend, 14th October 1916.
50 CTC, p. 20; FPW, p. 1. Baker was not a relation.
51 Information provided by Lynette Beardwood, FANY archivist.
52 M.A. St Clair Stobart, War and Women (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913), p. 5.
53 Lyn MacDonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 16; Yvonne McEwen, It’s a Long Way to Tipperary (Dunfermline: Cualann Press, 2006), pp. 39, 45.
54 Irene Ward, FANY Invicta (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 27. Ward was quoting an early member of the FANY.
55 ‘England’s New Woman – A Woman of War’, San Antonio Light and Gazette, 8th July 1909. Although this article is from an American publication, its original source would have been one of the British papers.
56 LS, pp. 10–11.
57 FPW, p. 6. See also M.A. St Clair Stobart, Miracles and Adventures: An Autobiography, 2nd edn. (London: Rider & Co., 1936), p. 83.
58 ‘Nursing Echoes’, British Journal of Nursing, 3rd July 1909, p. 13.
59 FPW, pp. 6–7.
60 Information provided by Lynette Beardwood, FANY archivist.
61 LET/DSAB.
62 An exception was made for Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker, two women who worked at a frontline first-aid post in Pervyse, Belgium.
63 Nineteen died in Serbia itself. Two died of disease shortly after arriving back in England.
64 IWM/EA.
65 EYS, pp. 16–17.
66 The Scottish Women’s Hospitals were not used for suffrage propaganda for fear that it would backfire. See ISL, p. 110.
67 ISL, p. 70.
68 WWU, p. 139.
69 Nurses, some of whom were paid, came from more diverse backgrounds. See ISL, p. x.
70 LET/DSAB.
71 Jan and Cora Gordon, Two Vagabonds in Serbia and Montenegro (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1939), p. 152. The 1916 edition of this book, published under the title The Luck of Thirteen (London: J
ohn Murray, 1916), omits this information.
Chapter 3
1Vučetić is the most likely original spelling of the Anglicized “Woutchetitch”. See SEG, p. 48.
2 BM/DD, p. 782.
3 LET/ES.
4 FSC/ALN.
5 See SEG, p. 56 [illustration].
6 LET/ES. See also SEG, p. 48.
7 See: LP/HW [right-hand illustration]; SEG, p. 56 [illustration].
8 FSC/D, 30th August 1914.
9 FSC/D, 7th September 1914.
10 FSC/ALN.
11 NT/NS.
12 NT/NS. See also: FSC/ALN; DC/DL.
13 FSC/ALN.
14 See: SEG, p. 107; ‘Typhus Takes Toll’, Stillwater County Democrat, 29th May 1915.
15 LET/ES.
16 LET/ES.
17 FSC/ALN.
18 LP/HW. The source of this anecdote was almost certainly Flora.
19 BJN/BN.
20 BBF, p. 108.
21 Josephine, Newcombe, ‘Serbia: The Second Onslaught’, History of the First World War: Serbia: Defeat into Victory, Vol. II, No. 2 (London: BPC Publishing, 1970), p. 484.
22 BAL, p. 314. See also: Stanley Naylor, ‘The Serbian People in War Time’, Scribner’s Magazine, March 1916, p. 375; JMH/AHC, p. 134.
23 FW, p. 19.
24 BAL, pp. 314–15.
25 Quoted in BAL, p. 315.
26 BAL, p. 316; WSB, p. 272. See also TF, p. 18.
27 R.A. Reiss, How Austria-Hungary Waged War in Serbia (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1916), p. 37. Reiss’s investigation was far from impartial, as his investigation was sponsored by the Serbian government. However, other eyewitnesses corroborated his reports of atrocities. See ASSA, p. 16.
28 JMH/AHC, p. 138.
29 FSC/ALN.
30 LET/ES.
31 SEG, p. 51.
32 FSC/D, 15th February 1915.
33 HARCN, pp. 187–88.
34 See John E. Mackenzie, ed., University of Edinburgh Roll of Honour 1914–1919 (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1921), p. 85.
35 Edinburgh University Special Collections, records of the School of Medicine.
36 FSC/D, 12th October 1914.
37 FSC/D, 13th, 17th October 1914.
38 AG/RD.
39 FSC/D, 1st, 3rd November 1914.
40 AG/RD.
41 FSC/D, 5th November 1914; LP/HW.
42 See SEG, pp. 108–109.
43 NYT/NB. See also FSC/ALN.
44 ‘The Care of the Wounded’, British Journal of Nursing, 24th October 1914.
45 ‘Mme Grouitch Begs Aid’, Oakland Tribune, 20th May 1915. Violet O’Brien had trained in Cork and worked in Calcutta. See ‘Appointments’, British Journal of Nursing, 29th May 1915.
46 NYT/NB.
47 ‘Lauds US Red Cross’, Washington Post, 17th January 1915.
48 NYT/NB. Nonetheless, they managed to save most of their patients. Of the two thousand that passed through the hospital during their time there, only fifty died. See BJN/BN.
49 Lady Paget, With Our Serbian Allies (London: Serbian Relief Fund, 1915), p. 3. See also EWD.
50 DC/DL.
51 ‘The Needs of Our Serbian Ally’, Daily Mail, 10th December 1914.
52 FSC/D, 13th November 1914.
53 FSC/D, 14th November 1914.
54 NYT/NB.
55 JMH/AHC, p. 143.
56 MOMI, p. 144.
57 SJ, p. 145.
58 Claire Hirshfield, ‘In Search of Mrs Ryder: British Women in Serbia During the Great War’, East European Quarterly, Vol. XX, No. 4, January 1987, p. 389.
59 See ‘Alarming State of Disease in Servia’, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 4th April 1915.
60 ‘Nursing Typhus in Serbia’, British Journal of Nursing, 22nd May 1915; SJ, p. 60; MBL, p. 103.
61 ‘The Passing Bell’, British Journal of Nursing, 9th January 1915.
62 WEE, p. 42.
63 MBL, p. 118. See also MWWI.
64 MBL, p. 54.
65 HARCN, p. 188.
Chapter 4
1 AWS, p. 10. Today’s equivalent is roughly £124,000.
2 NYT/NB. See also: ESRC/LET, from Helen Fidelia Draper to Miss Jane A. Delano, 18th November 1915; ESRC/LET, from “Chairman, National Committee, Red Cross Nursing Service” [Jane Delano] to Mrs Wm K. Draper, 20th November 1915.
3 AWS, p. 10; letter on British Red Cross paper, 16th January 1915, IWM/FS.
4 NT/IWM.
5 FSC/D, 14th February 1915.
6 UTF, p. 114; HD, p. 19; Monica M. Stanley, My Diary in Serbia (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1916), p. 25.
7 UTF, p. 115.
8 See: HD, p. 30; HARCN, p. 180; NYT/HSD.
9 ‘Making a War’, Lima Daily News, 8th July 1915.
10 NYT/HSD.
11 NYT/RC.
12 Today, with proper treatment, the mortality from typhus fever is around one per cent.
13 See ‘Report of the Death of an American Citizen’ [3rd March 1915], Reports of the Deaths of American Citizens, General Records of the Department of State, National Archives, Washington DC [Record Group 59]. See also: ‘American Doctor Suicides in Serbia’, Coshocton Morning Tribune, 28th April 1915; ‘Talks to Medical Society’, Orange County Times, 7th December 1917; ‘Serbian Nurses Come Home’, Emporia Gazette, 16th July 1916.
14 NYT/RC.
15 WSE, p. 72. See also TSC, p. 248.
16 ASSA, p. 11.
17 Pamela Bright, ‘A British Nurse in Serbia’, History of the First World War: Mackensen’s Balkan Victory, Vol. III, No. 8 (London: BPC Publishing, 1970), p. 1120; EWD, pp. 36–37; ASSA, pp. 84–86.
18 ASSA, p. 109.
19 The Anglo-American Unit were the first “mission” per se to start work in Serbia during the war, although the first foreign medical workers were in fact Dr van Tienhoven and his head nurse, Miss de Groote. They had been travelling in Eastern Europe when war was declared. They began work in the provincial hospital in Valjevo on 7th August 1914. See ASSA.
20 ASSA, p. 88.
21 ASSA, p. 113. See also ‘Dr Cookingham, 79, Dies; Was Surgeon in Rhinebeck’, Poughkeepsie Journal, 9th February 1968.
22 UHD/SIN.
23 LET/BCWW.
24 ASSA, p. 114.
25 LDN/VD.
26 MBL, p. 203.
27 LET/BCWW.
28 NT/IWM.
29 MBL, p. 238. See also: EWD, pp. 30–31.
30 DC/DL. At least two Greek doctors were also at work there, as were about twenty members of the Russian Red Cross.
31 FSC/D, 16th February 1915.
32 MBL, p. 239.
33 See ‘The Cry of Serbia’, Nursing Times, 19th December 1914.
34 MBL, pp. 239–40.
35 MBL, p. 240; FSC/D, 17th February 1915.
36 FWDN/ND.
37 FSC/D, 18th February 1915.
38 NYT/RC.
39 FSC/D, 21st February 1915.
40 FSC/ALN.
41 See ‘Hannah Jessie Hankin-Hardy’, Raunds War Memorials Research Project, www.raundswarmemorials.org/2918/18738.html.
42 See letter dated 21st February 1916, ‘Prisoners: Balkan Files 1915’, NAK [FO 383/131].
43 BM/DD, pp. 793–94.
44 FSC/D, 20th February 1915.
45 FSC/ALN. Flora’s notes state that Cooke had died the “day before”, i.e. 19th February, but Cooke in fact died on 10th February 1915. See: ‘From a Surgeon’s Notebook’, Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas, Vol. XVI, No. 8, May 1916, p. 255; LET/BCWW.
46 APT. See also UHD/SIN.
47 FSC/D, 22nd February 1915.
48 See ASSA.
49 IS/OMS.
50 FSC/D, 3rd March 1915.
51 SNW/TYE. See also: WEE, pp. 48, 90–91; CA/ASW; ‘Typhus Epidemic in Serbia, Where Washington Doctor Gave His Life, Kills 30% of Population’, Washington Post, 21st June 1915.
52 CA/ASW.
53 SNW/TYE.
54 IS/OMS.
55 FSC/D, 3rd March 1915.
56 See: LFH, p. 144; EWD, p. 38.
57 MP, p. 47.
58 ‘Mrs Farwell Describes Her War Experiences’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 3rd May 1916.
59 See: SEG, pp. 108, 109 [illustration captions]; HARCN, p. 191; ‘The Passing Bell’, British Journal of Nursing, 20th March 1915; UTF, pp. 127–28; WWU, p. 115.
60 Nan had been a member of another all-women unit that Mabel had taken to Antwerp the previous year, which had been forced to retreat ahead of the German capture of the Belgian city.
61 FSC/D, 22nd February 1915.
62 SNW/TYE.
63 NYTR/AN, 20th June 1915.
64 FSC/D, 3rd March 1915.
65 Herbert Corey, The Army Means Business (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1942), pp. 190–91.
66 CA/ASW.
67 FSC/ALN.
68 FSC/ALN. She did not name the explorer.
69 CA/ASW; A/ITB.
70 FSC/D, 25th February 1915.
71 FSC/ALN.
72 NYTR/AN.
73 LI/WW.
74 FSC/D, 1st March 1915.
75 FSC/ALN.
76 FSC/D, 22nd February 1915. According to Dr Jeanneret Minkine, a remarkably similar mindset existed at the French Mission in Pirot. “It is a curious psychological phenomenon that the fact of seeing so many people die, causes one to regard death as a very common event, even when it is a question of one’s own death.” See TF, p. 16.
77 Dr Josif and Mrs Ruža Vinaver’s son, Stanislav, whom Flora would later meet, is believed to be “Constantine the Poet” of BLGF.
78 His name does not appear within Irish or British medical registers. Therefore he was unlikely to have been a doctor, but it is possible he was some sort of engineer.
79 MAS, p. 190.
80 FSC/D, 8th March 1915.
81 See: ‘The War: Serbia’, British Medical Journal, 28th August 1915; ‘Fever Takes More Victims than War’, Lincoln Daily News, 11th May 1915; TF, p. 22.
82 TF, pp. 23, 33. See also MBL, p. 307.
83 WEE, p. 31.
84 IWM/IFS; FSC/ALN.
85 LDN/VD; IWM/IFS.
86 FSC/ALN.
87 FSC/D, 14th March 1915.
88 UTF, p. 195.
89 FSC/D, 14th–21st March 1915, written on 22nd March when she had sufficiently recovered.
90 UTF, p. 195.
91 SNW/TYE.
92 FSC/D, 2nd, 6th April 1915.
93 FSC/D, 7th–15th April 1915.
94 FSC/D, 20th February 1915. Within one three-week period in Valjevo alone, twenty-one doctors died.
A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes Page 42