Let’s remember Ulster’s forgotten or overlooked nurses of the Great War

She served in a UVF Hospital at home and in the 20th General Hospital at Camiers, France.

Posted to the 1st London General Hospital at Camberwell Gertrude died of pneumonia on December 12 1916, aged 35.

In his sermon in Belmont Presbyterian Church on Sunday, December 17 1916 the Reverend MacDermott paid tribute to Gertrude: “Miss Taylor’s death reminds us that not all the heroes in the war were men; they were not all to be found among the fighters at the front. Not infrequently they were to be found among those who, all unmentioned, faithfully performed their duties at the bedsides of the wounded and weary. For them there was no roar of the guns, no excitement of the charge - nothing but the endless battle against suffering and death; but they were heroes and heroines all the same.”

In a poignant e-mail to Roamer, History Hub Ulster (HHU) Chair Gavin Bamford noted: “in the light of the current Covid-19 pandemic and the tremendous work being undertaken for all the community by the front-line workers, the words spoken so gracefully by Reverend MacDermott only too easily fit into today’s praise.”

HHU researcher Nigel Henderson has been researching local VAD nurses who died during WWI and tells their stories here today and Friday, describing them as “Ulster’s forgotten or overlooked nurses of the Great War”.

There is a memorial tablet in St Anne’s Cathedral which commemorates the names of 18 nurses from across Ireland who died in WWI whilst serving with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS).

However, Nigel Henderson has identified 11 women from Ulster who died whilst serving in hospitals with the VAD. These women, and there may be others that Nigel has not yet identified, are not commemorated by name on any memorial plaque, although some are commemorated on civic, church, club, or school memorials.

Nigel explained: “VAD was an umbrella organisation for the British Red Cross Society and the St John of Jerusalem Ambulance Brigade. VAD volunteers came from all strata of society, although they mainly came from the middle classes.”

Famous Titanic survivor Violet Jessop became a VAD nurse on Titanic’s sister ship Britannic and survived a second sinking when the requisitioned hospital ship hit a mine in the Aegean Sea in 1916. Whilst VAD’s principal purpose was to provide medical assistance, in a variety of roles, they also provided social services.

Mabel Robinson, of Robinson & Cleaver, served in the Hospital Supply Depot in Belfast and later was in charge of the VAD Buffet in the Great Northern Railway terminus.

The buffet provided refreshments to sailors and soldiers, some of them in transit to hospitals.

Lilla Anderson and Emilie Anderson, associated with the Anderson and McAuley firm, served as a VAD nurse and housekeeper, respectively, at three military hospitals in England. Mrs Kate Slack of Wheatfield House in north Belfast, served at the Rest House for Wounded Soldiers and Sailors in Belfast and packed parcels at the Old Town Hall for POWs.

Her husband, Captain Charles Owen Slack, was killed in action on July 1 1916 with 14th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles. Mrs Mary Robertson Dunlop Coey of Merville House in Whitehouse prepared sphagnum moss for use as a front-line anti-septic.

Four of her sons served in the Great War and Midshipman John Smiley Coey died on 1st January 1915, aged 16, when HMS Formidable was sunk by a German U-Boat’s torpedo.

One of Ulster’s best-known VAD nurses was Emma Sylvia Duffin from the Cliftonville Road.

Emma and two of her sisters - Celia Marion and Sylvia Mary - served with the VAD and are commemorated on the memorial tablet in All Souls (Non-Subscribing) Presbyterian Church in Belfast.

Emma served in military hospitals in Egypt during 1915 and 1916 and spent the remainder of the war serving in military hospitals at Le Havre and Calais.

Mentioned in Despatches by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Emma renewed her VAD service when the Second World War started and was appointed commandant of the VAD nurses based at Stranmillis Military Hospital.

Her diary, held at the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI), provides an account of the German air raids on Belfast.

One gripping entry relates to the time she spent in St George’s Market, used as a morgue for unidentified bodies, where she helped grief-stricken families search among the coffins for their loved ones.

Appalled by what she saw, she wrote “I had seen many dead, but they had died in hospital beds, their eyes had been reverently closed, their hands crossed on their breasts; death had been glossed over, made decent. Here it was grotesque, repulsive, horrible…death should be dignified, peaceful. Hitler had made even death grotesque.”

In 2017, the Ulster History Circle erected a blue plaque at the house where Emma Duffin was born in University Square.

On Friday’s Roamer-page Nigel Henderson will be tell us more about Gertrude Annie Taylor and ten other local VAD nurses who died in WWI.

Meanwhile the website of the British Red Cross Society (https://vad.redcross.org.uk/) can be searched for VAD record cards and if you have information on any other Ulster VADs who died in the Great War, please email details to History Hub Ulster ([email protected])

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