Esther Isaac

Place of birth: Mountain Ash

Service: Nurse, QAIMNSR, 1914 - 1920

Notes: Esther, born 1884, trained at Swansea General and Eye Hospital. She joined the QA nursing reserve in 1914, and was posted to Cambridge Military Hospital in 1915, during which time she was awarded the Royal Red Cross. In March 1917 she was sent to Bombay for 15th months, followed by a transfer to Baghdad Isolation Hospital where she was promoted to Sister. After the war she served for many years as Matron at Llwynpia Hospital. Esther remained on the QAIMNS Reserve list until 1937.

Reference: WaW0485

Esther Isaac

Newspaper photograph of Esther Isaac wearing her Royal Red Cross. Aberdare Leader 24th June 1916.

Army Form B103

‘Casualty Form’ listing Esther Isaac’s service at home and abroad.

Roll of Honour

Name of ‘Nurse Esther Isaac India’ on the roll of honour, Henrietta Street Independent Chapel, Swansea.

Irene (Ivy) Ace

Place of birth: Tenby

Service: Technical Administrator , WAAC, 1917 - 19

Notes: Ivy, born 1892, joined the WAAC in June 1917, and was posted to France as an administrator. Her WAAC records do not survive, but from her photograph it seems she was an ‘official’, ie an officer in the WAAC. She served in France for a year. After the War she became an agricultural student. She is recorded as having been given a flight in an aeroplane for her 21st birthday, despite this she does not seem to have transferred to the WRAF when it was formed in 1918.

Sources: Narbeth Museum/Amgueddfa Arberth https://woww.narberthmuseum.co.uk

Reference: WaW0483

Irene ‘Ivy’ Ace

Ivy Ace in WAAC Official’s outdoor uniform.

Irene \'Ivy\' Ace

Place of birth: Tenby

Service: Technical Administrator , WAAC, 1917 - 19

Notes: Ivy, born 1892, joined the WAAC in June 1917, and was posted to France as an administrator. Her WAAC records do not survive, but from her photograph it seems she was an ‘official’, ie an officer in the WAAC. She served in France for a year. After the War she became an agricultural student. She is recorded as having been given a flight in an aeroplane for her 21st birthday, despite this she does not seem to have transferred to the WRAF when it was formed in 1918.

Sources: Narbeth Museum/Amgueddfa Arberth https://woww.narberthmuseum.co.uk\r\n\r\n\r\n

Reference: WaW0483

Irene ‘Ivy’ Ace

Ivy Ace in WAAC Official’s outdoor uniform.

Lily Ellis

Place of birth: Mountain Ash

Service: Nurse, TFNS, 1914 - 1919

Notes: The daughter of a well-known Mountain Ash choral conductor, Hugh Ellis, Lily trained at Swansea General and Eye Hospital. After working in Swansea and Malvern she was appointed to be theatre sister at Lewisham Hospital London. At the outbreak of War she joined the TFNS and was serving at the 1st Southern General Hospital when King George V visited it in 1916; she was awarded the Royal Red Cross.

Reference: WaW0486

Lily Ellis

Newspaper photograph of Nurse Lily Ellis. Aberdare Leader 24th June 1916.

Newspaper report

Report of Lily Ellis’s appointment as Theatre Sister at Lewisham Hospital.

Newspaper report

Report of Lily Ellis award of the Royal Red Cross. Aberdare Leader 24th June 1916.

Edith E Copham

Service: Munitions Worker

Death: 1918-11-18, NEF Pembrey, Ffrwydrad

Memorial: Cenotaph, Swansea, Glamorgan

Notes: aged 19. She was killed in the same explosion as Mary Fitzmaurice and Jane Jenkins; MF and EEC shared a public funeral.

Sources: Explosion report Herald of Wales 14th December 1914; Funeral report South Wales Weekly Post 30 Nov 1918 / Adroddiad am y ffrwydrad Herald of Wales 14eg Rhagfyr 1914; Adroddiad am yr angladd South Wales Weekly Post 30ain Tachwedd 1918

Reference: WaW0002

Swansea Cenotaph

Name of Edith E Copham on Swansea Cenotaph

Newspaper report

Report of Funeral of Edith E Copham and Mary Fitzmaurice

Newspaper report

Explosion report Herald of Wales 14th December 1918

Elizabeth Davies

Place of birth: Burry Port

Service: Munitions Worker

Death: 1920:05:09, Llanelly Hospital, Accident: ruptured liver/Damwain, afu wedi ei rwygo

Notes: A young woman, Elizabeth Davies, of Sandfield House, Burry Port, died at Llanelly General Hospital on Sunday, from injuries sustained at the Pembrey National Filling Factory. The deceased was dismounting from a works train while in motion at its arrival at the Factory on Friday, when she slipped between the footboard and the platform. She was dragged some distance and sustained severe internal injuries. Llanelly and County Guardian 13th May 1920 Aged 17. 'A young woman, Elizabeth Davies, of Sandfield House, Burry Port, died at Llanelly General Hospital on Sunday, from injuries sustained at the Pembrey National Filling Factory. The deceased was dismounting from a works train while in motion at its arrival at the Factory on Friday, when she slipped between the footboard and the platform. She was dragged some distance and sustained severe internal injuries.' Llanelly and County Guardian 13th May 1920 A young woman, Elizabeth Davies, of Sandfield House, Burry Port, died at Llanelly General Hospital on Sunday, from injuries sustained at the Pembrey National Filling Factory. The deceased was dismounting from a works train while in motion at its arrival at the Factory on Friday, when she slipped between the footboard and the platform. She was dragged some distance and sustained severe internal injuries. Llanelly and County Guardian 13th May 1920

Reference: WaW0089

Elizabeth Davies.

Coloured photograph of Elizabeth Davies

Elizabeth Davies Death Certificate

Death certificate for Elizabeth Davies

Report of Elizabeth Davies's accident

Newspaper report of Elizabeth Davies's death

Florence Missouri Caton

Place of birth: ‘at sea’ off Cuba

Service: Nurse, SWH, September 1915 – July 1917 /

Death: 1917/7/15, Salonika, Appendicitis / Llid y pendics

Notes: Florence Missouri Caton was born on board ship (possibly the source of her middle name, though no evidence has yet been found) in about 1876, to parents from Wrexham. A trained nurse, she worked in Lancashire before joining the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in 1915. She had two periods of work in the Balkans. Shortly after her arrival in 1915 her unit was captured by the Austrians, and released in December. In August she returned to Serbia, working in various hospitals and dressing stations until she died of appendicitis in July 1917. She is buried In Lembet Road Military Cemetery, Salonika.

Sources: http://scottishwomenshospitals.co.uk/

Reference: WaW0212

Florence Caton

Florence Caton Scottish Women's Hospitals

Grave Registration

Entry in Salonika (Lambert Road) grave register.

Newspaper report

Report of death of Florence Caton, Y Brython, 30 August 1917. Translation: ‘Laying the nurse to rest. In faraway Serbia the remains of Nurse Caton of Wrexham were laid to rest. She had endeared herself to the wretched people of that country through her untiring labour of love in their midst. There is talk of erecting a white marble cross on her small grave.’

Ethel Saxon

Place of birth: Abertillery

Service: Staff Nurse, TFNS

Death: 1917-09-03, Karachi, Appendicitis/Llid y pendics

Memorial: War Memorial; Nurses’ Memorial; Delhi Gate, Kingsland; Liverpool Cathedral; Delhi, Herefordshire; Lancashire; India

Notes: Born 1891, her father was a builder and joiner. She worked for some time in Liverpool before serving overseas. Her parents retired to Kingsland, Herefordshire where she is memorialised; her name also appears on the Nurses’ memorial in Liverpool Cathedral, the Nurses’ memorial in York Minster and the Indian war memorial the Great Gate at Delhi.

Reference: WaW0134

Kingsland War Memorial

Name of Ethel Saxon on Kingsland War Memorial

Roll of Honour, Kingsland Church

Name of Staff Nurse Ethel Saxon on the Roll of Honour, Kingsland Church

Death Notice

Death Notice of Ethel Saxon

Nurses's Memorial

Nurses’ Memorial, Liverpool Cathedral

Nurses’ memorial Liverpool

Name of Ethel Saxon on the Nurses’ Memorial, Liverpool Cathedral

Morfydd Owen

Place of birth: Treforest

Service: Composer, singer

Death: 1918/09/07, Mumbles, Appendicitis/reaction to chloroform / Pendics/adwaith i glorofform

Notes: Morfydd Owen was born in 1891 to an ordinary, though musical, chapel-going family. Very early she showed great musical promise – she is said to have started composing aged 6 - and she entered University College, Cardiff, on a scholarship in 1909. In 1912 her parents were persuaded to let Morfydd study composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won every available prize during her first year. In London she began to move in influential Welsh circles, in 1914 assisting in the collecting and arranging of traditional Welsh songs from Flintshire and the Vale of Clwyd. She was a prolific composer, and a singer with an outstanding mezzo-soprano voice. She was also prominent in more Bohemian circles; among her friends were Ezra Pound and D H Lawrence. In 1917 she married, unexpectedly, Ernest Jones, the psycho-therapist and biographer of Freud. This seriously limited her professional career, particularly as Jones did not approve of his wife performing in public. In July 1918 she wrote to a friend ‘married life doesn’t seem to me to be quite the easiest thing to adapt oneself to, and has taken up all my time’. In September of that year, staying with her parents-in-law at Mumbles, Morfydd developed appendicitis, and died, perhaps as a result of the botched operation. Her Cardiff University professor David Evans wrote: “I regard her early death as an incalculable loss to Welsh music indeed, I know of no young British composer who showed such promise.” Although only 26 when she died, Morfydd left over 250 surviving compositions.

Sources: http://discoverwelshmusic.com/composers/morfydd-owen. www.illuminatewomensmusic.co.uk/illuminate-blog/rhian-davies-an-incalculable-loss-morfydd-owen-1891-1918

Reference: WaW0335

Morfydd Owen

Morfydd Owen in 1915. Private collection.

Folk songs

Folk songs collected by Mrs Herbert Lewis and Morfydd Owen

Early songs of Morfydd Owen

Advertisement for one of the memorial volumes of Morfydd Owen’s songs. 1923.

Augusta Devisch (née Dekien)

Place of birth: Belgium

Service: Refugee, wife

Death: 2nd February 1916, ‘long and lingering illness’/ ’salwch hir a throfaus’

Notes: Augusta, born c 1895, was a refugee from Belgium living with her husband Edward, two step children and other family members in Siloa Buildings, Aberdare. The community worshipped at Siloa Chapel which allowed the Belgian Catholics to use the building.

Sources: Aberdare leader 12th February 1916

Reference: WaW0137

Aberdare Leader

Newspaper report of funeral