The Nightingale Shore Murder

by Rosemary Cook

  Mabel Rogers returned from Belgium in May 1915, with regret for the end of her work there:

  ‘It was with some reluctance that I quitted this interesting sphere of work, but my leave had expired and I was obliged to return to the equally necessary though perhaps not as exciting work of nursing the sick poor in their own homes.’

  Her appetite for war work must have prevailed, however. By July 1916, she was back in a military hospital. She wrote again to the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine from the Hopital Temporaire, Arc en Barrois, Haute Marne, in France:

  ‘I have been meaning to write ever since I came out, but get very little time to write at all and am on duty every day from 7am till 9pm, and often do not get off at all. When I do I feel I must get out. The country is lovely and the woods and wild flowers most enchanting. This is my eighth week here and until today I have never had a half or whole day off, but today I am having a whole day…

  I am in charge of the Hospice, a building about five minutes’ walk from the Chateau. They started it for Convalescents, but none are now allowed within the war zone, so it is used as a sort of overflow from the Chateau. We have seventy patients and have from sixty to eighty dressings to do every morning. I have all the meals to serve for the seventy, as I am the only trained nurse up here and have four pros [probationers] to work under me. The work is not heavy but pretty constant, with continual evaluations and intakes which all mean extra work.’

  Another of the QNs who wrote for the magazine had been sent to Belgium in September 1915 to nurse in an infectious diseases hospital there. The hospital stood between the sand dunes and the sea, four miles from the first line of trenches. Her description, published in October 1916, paints a remarkable picture of English nursing culture meeting Belgian health care for the first time. Her interest in the arrangements of the hospital and the nursing undertaken there by nuns captures most of her attention. The dangers faced by the staff and patients are almost an afterthought.

  ‘We were agreeably surprised’ she wrote, ‘to find all requisites necessary for the comfort and proper nursing of infectious diseases were already fully installed, and our duties were to see that the patients were well cared for and nursed… In Belgium the sick are nursed by Nuns and there are very few ‘trained’ nurses. But the Nuns make very good nurses especially when they understand why they are told to do things which are strange to them, such as: putting away utensils which have been used for typhoid patients – clean – instead of leaving them under the beds, or, taking precautions when going from one infectious case to another, e.g. from diphtheria to typhoid wards, etc, or cleaning hands thoroughly before going to their midnight meal, and a score of other probationary instructions which we did our best to instil into them in our best broken Flemish. The Nuns would say, ‘Oh Sister – you are so difficile!’ but always with a merry laugh kept us friends, and the desired result was accomplished.

  The Lazarets (or wards) were made of wood, and portable, and held twenty-four beds in each. At the entrance a small room on one side, about eight feet by six feet, was set aside for the Sisters, and held our special requisites, drugs, lotions, and Doctors’ washstand and towels. Just opposite this room on the other side was the little ward kitchen, the same size, where crockery, etc, for patients was kept, and also our famous ‘Primus’ stove on which we did our sterilising. The ward has beds on either side and a division through the centre of the doors with two glass windows (high up over the beds) connecting male and female wards; the doors are kept open, except at special times. At the end of the lazaret are two isolation rooms where we usually nursed our cerebro-spinal meningitis or other serious single cases.

  Lastly came the sink room on one side with shelves all round, and stand with bucket under and two other buckets, one with lime and one with Jeyes’ disinfectant and their respective mops, and on the other side the WC – bucket and stand completes the lazaret, which was raised on blocks to keep the dampness of the sand from the floors. But I must not forget to mention the lovely white bath with which each lazaret was provided, and a zinc one with fire attached; also the stove in the centre of each lazaret from which we all found much comfort during the trying winter weather.

  We also had a dressing wagon beautifully fitted with douche apparatus, jars for sterile water and lotion and necessary articles for aseptic dressings with basin and bucket underneath for scrubbing up. As far as possible each infection was nursed separately; two trained sisters and two or three Nuns by day to each lazaret, and by night two sisters in charge, and generally two Nuns to each lazaret. We wore separate gowns for each lazaret and, of course, scrupulously disinfected our hands when leaving a ward, and in that way we were able to nurse diphtheria, cerebro-spinal meningitis, scarlet fever, measles, typhoid, erysipelas, and even midwifery and general diseases without any complications.

  The treatment is very different to ours in many instances, but one quickly gets used to typhoid and diphtheria patients sitting up from the first day of admission and given drugs in doses which would make one shiver to think of in England. The recoveries were truly wonderful, especially with enteric and cerebro-spinal meningitis, but we were fortunate in having the laboratory and bacteriologists at work all day in a specially equipped department.

  During the day when there was any sun at all you would see beds taken out on the Dunes, and the tuberculosis patients having the sun cure; this combined with tuberculin injections produced rapid improvement.

  Our patients were all refugees from the surrounding towns and villages from beyond Ypres to Newport. The Nuns working for us were all from bombarded Convents quite near.

  Sometimes the poor refugees were frightened to come to the hospital and hid themselves in trenches and among trees and had to be found by the Military and their faithful dogs. The dogs have played a great part in this war and are very intelligent and successful. They search out a missing patient after being given an article from their room, tearing away with their noses down and the Military police at their heels. In this way we have saved many of the very sick patients and also prevented infectious disease spreading amongst the soldiers.

  The terrible racket of almost unceasing gun-fire in Belgium by land, sea and air has tried the people very much, but in spite of the terror of it all, not knowing how long they could stay in each place or how soon their houses or their bodies might be destroyed by shell or bombs, they were very bright and cheerful, and always more grateful for the cheerful aspect of the hospital and the kindness shewn to them by all the Sisters … It is wonderful how used we all grew to the guns and bombs, going on with one’s work only looking up to see where the shells are landing, murmuring the truly beautiful prayers which the Nuns kept repeating again and again until the danger was over.

  We were surrounded by sand hills and when bombs were dropped, they nearly always buried themselves in the sand, leaving big holes and scattered shrapnel, and we were thankful to find we had escaped damage (except for a few windows) every time. Once when eight bombs were dropped in our hospital area they quite encircled us and we did feel we had been wonderfully preserved, for we had about 100 small children in with diphtheria and measles etc.’

  There were other risks for the Queen’s Nurses in their war work. During their travels to their posts, some of them experienced capture and imprisonment; and several wrote to the QN magazine about being on ships that were torpedoed. Meirion Evans and her companions survived such an event in 1917:

  ‘Our ship was torpedoed at 10am and sank in an hour. The nursing staff (66 of us) were the first to be lowered into the life boats, and were in our boat for three hours when we were picked up by an ally’s destroyer. The last hour was dreadful as the boat was full of water and we had to stand up and cling to one another or anything we could get hold of. The sea was so rough by this time that the waves were coming right over our heads at times, and two or three nurses were washed away, but a splendid sailor boy rescued them. They said the boat would have floated forever, but I am afraid in anothe
r half hour we should have been done up. We were at last landed and stayed in convents, the people were very good to us.’

  As well as the work in military hospitals, Queen’s Nurses also ventured out into the community to help local people suffering after bombardments. Ethel Ubsdell was a QN with the Friends’ Expedition, Chalons-sur-Marne, who wrote about her visit to a shelled village:

  ‘Hearing that a certain village had been severely bombarded I started off in the car to see if help was required. We called on the Mayor of the place who told us that a certain woman was expecting her baby and gave us directions where should find her. We arrived at the place and found one wall of a house. I went in to investigate but could see nothing. I went a little further and found a sort of scullery place with a hole in the ground. Hearing a moan I went out to the Chauffeur and asked him to come and help me (the Chauffeur I may add was only a young medical student). We advanced to the hole and found a sort of rope ladder. The Chauffeur went into this and I followed, feeling very brave!

  We alighted in a black hole and fell over some children, three of them, ranging from 5 years of age down to 2 years. Hearing another moan from a corner we went and found the poor mother lying on straw, having given birth to a child about an hour previously. Both the poor mother and the children were covered with vermin, and the only garment the mother had on was a chemise. The Chauffeur took off his shirt and we wrapped the new born baby in it, while I took off one of my undergarments and wrapped it round the poor woman. All the food these unfortunate creatures had to eat was a little bread. We quickly attended to the mother and carried the whole family up to the car, and conveyed them off to the hospital. I am thankful to say that the mother and infant are doing well, and the children are none the worse for their experience. The husband of the poor woman we found had been taken prisoner of war.’

  It was not just the demands of nursing, midwifery and the hospital arrangements that interested the Queen’s Nurses, however. Some of them enjoyed the adventure and novelty of being abroad, and were determined to experience their war to the full. W. Wells was a QN who worked in one of the Urgency Cases hospitals in France. She wrote back gleefully:

  ‘Last Monday I was on duty and had run up to the house for something and I heard guns, but of course thought nothing of it, but as I came from the house I saw a doctor running from the woods and pointing upwards and there was a German aeroplane being shot at, and then followed seven more flying overhead and we think one was hit. The sky was full of puffs of smoke. Then all was quiet til the afternoon fifteen more flew over. We all of us ran out into the open each time with telescopes, etc, we were very excited and not a bit frightened. Now there is a notice that in the event of future air raids all except those on duty are to go into the cellar.

  Well, it was my half-day off, and in the evening we went out for a little walk to look at the starshells falling which can be seen miles away and then we came in. Then just before nine someone called out, ‘Here’s something to see!’ and we all trooped out again and saw a Zeppelin coming towards us like a silver cigar and lit up with searchlights. The guns fired and suddenly she tries to rise but was hit behind – then again in the middle, and a puff of smoke went up, followed by a burst of flame and she slowly sank, dropping a trail of fire all the way.

  How we cheered and cried ‘Vive la France!’ Then we rushed in and put on our coats and tore off to see it, for we knew it must be somewhere near R_____, and running and walking we arrived there and found we had another mile to go over a brook and a ploughed field. The Zeppelin had burnt out, but the bodies were still burning and we saw them.

  We got souvenirs of the ‘Zep’, bits of aluminium etc. It was surrounded by a sea of mud into which we sank and had to be dragged out; it pulled our shoes off and one or two of the sisters had to tie theirs on and throw them away afterwards.

  Then we turned home again and came across a ghastly sight, a dead German, who had evidently tried to save himself by jumping out. The field was pitted with huge bomb holes caused when they threw out the bombs before they fell…

  We found our two motors waiting in R_______, which we were very thankful for, and when we got home we had tea and biscuits, etc. Next morning Matron drove down and several of the nurses took snapshots. Oh! It was a day never to be forgotten. I do think I am lucky to be here.’

  Some of the QNs’ letters were evidently a bit too high-spirited and informative, as she ends this letter plaintively:

  ‘I would like to tell you a lot more, but I can’t, for the wretched censor has been here and he says for some time we have been giving far too much information and our letters have had to be held up, and I’m perfectly certain that I am on the ‘black list’, for I have written a good deal that I shouldn’t, quite innocently, in fact many of us have. I can’t tell you anything much now about the hospital or anything else. Spies put two and two together, and the country round here is infested with them.’

  Back in England, the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine was raising spirits by publishing some humorous stories about the war. In October 1916, it published a list of questions which, according to a note on the ward door, visitors to the East Leeds War Hospital were requested not to ask the patients:

  ‘Are you wounded?

  Did it hurt?

  Which hurt most – going in or coming out?

  How did you know you were wounded?

  Did the shell hit you?

  Did you see any Germans?

  Do you want to go back?

  How many did you kill?’

  But overall, the mood of the magazine was both sombre and resolute, aiming to encourage and support those nurses who were engaged on work relating to the war, at home and in Europe. The editor wrote in the same issue:

  ‘It used to be said that war did not concern women. There never was a grain of truth in it, and now we have learnt how deeply and terribly it does concern us.’

  Chapter 18

  The ‘White Queen’

  Florence could not wait to get into the War either. After leaving the Queen’s Institute briefly to take her sister Urith abroad for treatment, Florence rejoined in August 1914, the month in which Britain declared war on Germany. In October, at the age of 49, she went to work under the French Red Cross at Fort Mahon. By chance, Ethel Bedford Fenwick, the other former pupil of Middlethorpe Hall to become well known in nursing, was on the British Committee of the French Red Cross that approved her appointment.

  Florence’s war service took place in casualty clearing stations and hospitals, and on ambulance trains. Unlike Mabel, she never wrote back to the Institute about it, but her wartime activities are recorded in the Institute’s records, and the records of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Reserve, which she joined in 1915.

  The opening campaigns of the Great War, in 1914, led to the first experience of trench warfare and some of the most famous and horrific battles of the conflict. In October, the month that Florence arrived in France, the Belgians were forced to abandon Antwerp, and the Germans took Ghent, Lille, Bruges and Ostend in ‘the Race to the Sea.’ The first battle of Ypres was fought from October into November, and, towards the end of the year, the famous Christmas truce took place in the trenches. April 1915 saw the second battle of Ypres, and the first use of chlorine gas as a weapon of war by the Germans: mustard gas came later, at Ypres in July 1917. By September, the British were also using gas in the Third Battle of Artois.

  Chillingly, in October 1915, Florence’s last month with the French Red Cross, another British nurse, Edith Cavell, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels. Edith Cavell was almost exactly the same age as Florence, and, though she had never trained as a Queen’s Nurse, she had also been connected with the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses. Cavell had taken a post as a nurse for the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution, which was affiliated to the Institute, when she came back to England after a break from nursing. When the matron of the Institution fell ill, Cave
ll took on the role. She wrote to her old Matron at The London Hospital, Eva Luckes, to say:

  ‘I feel it rather a heavy responsibility as I know so little of the ‘Queen’s’ work or the etiquette of this branch of the work but I feel I must try to fill the days to the best of my ability.’

  In this she evidently succeeded, as she left with a grant of £10 from the Good Service Fund in recognition of her work.

  Cavell’s destination, when she left Manchester, was Brussels, where she set up and directed the Berkendael school of nursing. The school became a Red Cross hospital when Brussels came under German control, and Cavell used her post there to help around 200 allied soldiers to escape to Holland. She was arrested, sentenced by a German military court, and executed by firing squad on 12th October.

  Local newspapers in Manchester reported the execution, and the connection to their own community:

  ‘There appears to be no doubt that Miss Edith Cavell, the heroic nurse, who has been infamously executed at Brussels by the Germans, was at one time Matron of the Bradford Nursing Home, Manchester. Those with whom she came into contact were much impressed by her work … she left to undertake nursing work in Belgium with the good wishes of the Committee who had the highest opinion of her methods and abilities.’

  They also reported the special memorial service held in Manchester Cathedral on 29 October, timed to coincide with the national memorial service taking place at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Ideas for permanent memorials to Cavell were debated by the City, Cathedral and Institution staff, and resulted in several streets named after her, as well as the setting up of rest homes for nurses in England and several other countries.

  Florence’s service from October 1915 onwards continued through the Queen Alexander’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. As the war progressed, the injuries that she and other nurses in the field hospitals had to treat were far outside their usual areas of expertise. It is hard to imagine how the Queen’s Nurses, accustomed to the cradle-to-grave mix of infectious diseases, minor accidents and ailments they nursed on their rounds in Britain, coped with the overwhelming numbers of gassed, blasted and bayoneted young men who were now their patients. The ‘War Notes’ from the Harvard Graduates Magazine of September 1915 give some idea of the way casualties were handled, and the injuries they suffered, in just one hospital in Paris: