Week 6: My ancestor was a nurse

[Jill on the A272]

Whether a trained nurse or someone who offered nursing to invalids in their community this is an opportunity to showcase a nurse in your family tree, you might want to offer a short biography and speak about their work eg

Name
Birth location/date
Family background
Where you've found them on the census
Their workplace/employer
Any tips on researching this occupation?

[Next week: Doctor/Surgeon]

[Jill on the A272]

My 3x great grandmother Mary Steel (nee Collins) had a busy life in her little parish of Stedham in Sussex tucked away in what is now the A272 near Midhurst. In 1829 at Terwick she had been a bride at 18 marrying William Steel at Terwick, and she bore him 14 children, 12 of whom lived to adulthood.

It was not until she was widowed in 1870 that she has a recorded occupation, on the 1871 census she was subpostmistress at Stedham which which took over from her husband, but she must have assisted him as he was noted as "blind" on the 1851 and 1861 census.

In 1881 aged she was 71 and living with her married daughter Frances Faulkener, a dressmaker and her husband Walter, a lath cleaver and this is when Mary was a Nurse Woman, the enumerator has scrawled Sub Med Serv over the top, so I guess she was just offering basic nursing to the unwell or bedridden in the village. By 1891 she was no longer working, still living with the Faulkeners, though she later moved to Chalford in Gloucestershire to live with her youngest son Frederick and his wife Ada who had a grocers, and it was there that she died aged 89 in 1900.

[PhotoFamily]

My maternal grandmother was a nurse - traveled from Ontario to Toledo to attend the nursing school there. She continued to work after graduation then married my grandfather and naturalized. She continued to work off and on after she married.

[Gardengirl]

No true nurses in my family but my great Aunt signed up for the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) in the early 1920s.
She’s 2nd from the left in the front row.

636F7394-63A5-4A16-9CAE-D718ABE52D3C.jpeg

[Katarzyna]

My great aunt, Ivy Cassandra Wilkinson, was born in Tollesbury, Essex on 2nd June 1889 to parents Edward Henry Wilkinson and Cassandra Elizabeth Palmer.

Ivy Willinson.jpg

Photo taken circa 1911.

Ivy is listed as a Hospital Nurse at The Royal Hants County Hospital, Romsey Road, Winchester on 1911 census. It is here she gains her Nursing Certificate in1915 and she remained in Winchester throughout WW1. By 1919 she had moved to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge for further training and attains her Certificate as a State Registered Nurse in 1922. According to the UK & Ireland Nursing Registers 1898 - 1968, Ivy had moved on to Saints Leonards Cottage Hospital, Newton Road, Sudbury, in Suffolk by 1925 and in the 1939 Register she is listed there as Matron, SRN.

old-picture-St-Leonards.jpg
St Leonards Cottage Hospital was opened in 1867 on the site of an old leper home dating back to the reign of Edward11. It was taken over by NHS c1946 and closed in 2012 to be sold off for residential property development.

Ivy never married and eventually retired to her birthplace of Tollesbury, Essex where she died age 82 in1971.

Ref:
UK & Ireland Nursing Registers 1898 - 1968,

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/60423/

[jenoco]

My grandmother, Evelyn Thorne, born 1896 in Amesbury, Wiltshire, was a member of a Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) at the end of World War I. I have very little information about her service but know that she joined, age 22, on 30 May 1918 and Red Cross records show that she served in the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth. At the time of the 1921 census, she was still a member of the VAD but had moved to Helena Hospital, an army hospital at Shorncliffe, near Folkestone.

Evelyn married my grandfather, Harry Cox of Sonning Common, Oxfordshire in November 1921. We believe they had met some years earlier through one of Harry’s sisters (the Cox family had at one time lived near Amesbury).

EvelynThornenurse.JPG

My mother was also a nurse. She originally worked as a nursing auxiliary but decided to take her full nurses training when we children were old enough to look after ourselves. It wasn’t easy with three children still at home, but she persevered and qualified when in her forties.

[Jill on the A272]

jenoco how wonderful to have a photo of your grandmother in uniform, it's the same uniform as the nurse in my initial post at the top of the page, which is taken from a group photo in 1918 of my husband's grandfather and other patients in a military hospital.

[Gardengirl]

[FONT=Arial]My grandmother, Evelyn Thorne, born 1896 in Amesbury, Wiltshire, was a member of a Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) at the end of World War I. I have very little information about her service but know that she joined, age 22, on 30 May 1918 and Red Cross records show that she served in the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth.

Hi, jenoco, could you tell me where you found the Red Cross records about the VAD?

[Katarzyna]

My mum was a nurse as well. She was born in Ipswich in 1921 but the family moved out to Hadleigh where she spent most of her childhood. She attended the High School for Girls at Sudbury about 10 miles away. Her aunt was the Matron of the Cottage Hospital there so it is probable that it was she who encouraged my Mum to take up a nurse's training course at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge where she herself had worked. Mum is listed as a probationer nurse in training aged 18 on the 1939 Register. Despite it being wartime I know from listening in at family gatherings (as you do) that a good time was had during those three years. I overheard a story about my Mum being helped to climb in a Nurses Home window after missing a curfew! After gaining her SRN certificate she then spent a year on a Midwifery course at Birmingham.

Mum 1940 .jpg
Mum in training.

My Mum and Dad met and were married in 1944. By the time we children were at school in the early 1950's Mum was working as a District Nurse in Ipswich riding her bicycle around the town. When we moved north due to my Father's work, Mum again took up district nursing but this time instead of a bicycle she was given a sit up and beg Ford Poplar car which had one windscreen wiper and no heating. We lived in a cul de sac and I can remember during the "Big Freeze" of 1963 the snow was so deep the neighbours came out to help dig a passage down to the main road so Mum could get round to all her patients - especially those who needed injections.
For the latter part of their working lives they ran The Yorkshire Miner's Convalescent Home in Rhyll, North Wales as Matron and Superintendent.
They eventually retired to North Norfolk to a lovely village by the sea which became the whole family's holiday home too!

[jenoco]

Gardengirl I found them here: https://vad.redcross.org.uk/

The records give date of joining, age, home address and where they were in service.

Jill on the A272 yes, very lucky to have this. I also have a group photo (somewhere!).

[Jill on the A272]

Gardengirl I found them here: https://vad.redcross.org.uk/

The records give date of joining, age, home address and where they were in service.

I will check that out.

[Gardengirl]

Me too, thank you.

[roteto]

My mum did her SRN training in North Staffordshire the 1930s – met my police officer dad when he escorted an injured boy to casualty. Her career was varied. School nursing during the war, she recalled helping deal with children evacuated during the Liverpool blitz. In the early 1950s, she used her SRCN qualification as the matron of a care home babies and toddlers. She was colliery nurse for many years - one of the few women allowed to go go underground – though not often! While most of her time was spent dealing with non life threatening injuries and conditions, she trained miners’ first aid teams to deal with underground situations. After retiring, she found it difficult to take it easy and did various stints as relief warden in retirement homes – some of the residents being younger than she was.

[Caroline]

My VAD doesn’t really count as a nurse, but she did work at a military hospital in France from May 10th 1918 and was still there on 10th March 1919.

She was initially engaged as a war maid but then became a cook for the nursing sisters. She was 47 when she volunteered and was sent to No. 74 General Hospital in Trouville where she still was when the hospital was demobilised. She was still a VAD until 1st September of 1919.

Amy Elizabeth Lewcock née Reed was my great grandmother, mother of last week's soldier. I first came across her WW1 service on the National Archives - I was looking for her son at the time.

Her wartime service is something I am planning to write more about at some point.

The records are now online in various places and following them give me a good idea of where she was for at least one year.

1. Her individual medal card is like the medal card for other members of the armed forces which are currently available for free download.

medal-card-amy-TNA.jpg

2. The medal roll is on Ancestry and says where she served. The theatre of war, 1(a), is France and/or Belgium.

UK, World War I Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920

medal-roll-ancestry.jpg

There are transcripts of her service cards on findmypast.

British Red Cross Register Of Overseas Volunteers 1914-1918

British Army, British Red Cross Society Volunteers 1914-1918

You can also search in the British Red Cross website, First World War volunteers, but the images of the cards aren't loading at the time of writing.

amy-lewcock-war3.jpeg

Through Sue Light I have copies of these service cards. Sue was responsible for setting up the website Scarlet Finders. This is an invaluable site for researching nurses and in particular military nurses. Sadly, Sue died not long after I was in touch with her, but the site still remains available.

Scarlet Finders includes War diary extracts which mention 74 General Hospital and includes the time when Princess Mary visited them.

The Long, Long Trail has a detailed list of British Base Hospitals in France if you need to track one down.

[PhotoFamily]

My late brother-in-law's mother was a nurse, and served in North Africa during WWII. I don't know the details - I should try to find them!

[cbcarolyn]

loved reading through all these, amazing how there are many avenues that a nurse can take, not just in a hospital, what a har working bunch they all were, and bringing up a family too.

does often seem to be a union between police and nurses too, my cousin and his wife. My family seemed to have steered clear of anything medical!