Ethel Vaughan Owen

Place of birth: Llanidloes

Service: Nurse, VAD

Notes: Ethel, a doctor’s daughter, joined the VAD in 1915. Her service included postings to the Hospital Ship Britannia and to Valletta Hospital, Malta, where she became seriously ill with dysentery, but recovered. Many did not. rn

Reference: WaW0402

Red Cross record card [reverse]

Red cross card for Ethel Vaughan Owen, showing her overseas service.rn

Report of Ethel Vaughan Owen’s award of a Red Cross stripe.

Red Cross record card

Red cross card for Ethel Vaughan Owen.

Catherine J James

Place of birth: Llanelli

Service: Nurse, St Johns Ambulance

Death: 1919/12/04, Llanelli, Tuberculosis / Y diciáu

Memorial: Tabernacle Chapel, Llanelli, Carmarthenshire

Notes: Catherine was a member of the St John’s Ambulance. She served throughout the War, first in Porthcawl and then in Stebonheath, Llanelli (where she may have contracted the TB that killed her aged 28.) Her name appears on the war memorial plaque in Tabernacl Chapel, Llanelli.

Sources: https://www.wwwmp.co.uk/carmarthenshire-memorials/llanelli-tabernacl-chapel-war-memorial

Reference: WaW0404

War Memorial

Catherine James’s name on the memorial plaque in Tabernacl Chapel, Llanelli.

Kate Hopkins

Place of birth: Ystradgynlais

Service: Nurse, Not known / anhysbys, 1915 - 1918

Death: 1918/10/26, London, Influenza / y ffliw

Notes: Kate Hopkins had been a promising teacher, having trained in Stafford with a scholarship from Glamorgan. She began nursing in at the Great Western Hospital in London in 1915, and died there of Spanish flu aged 34.

Reference: WaW0406

Newspaper report

Report of the death of Kate Hopkins. Llais Llafur 2nd November 1918

Lily Stock

Place of birth: Pontypool

Service: Nurse, VAD, November 1917 – August 1919

Notes: Lily served with the VAD in Hospitals in Bristol and Colchester. She was paid, her pay rising from £12 per annum to £20 per annum. Her name appears on the Griffithstown Baptist Church Roll of Honour – possibly twice, as both Nurse Stock and Lily Stock are named. There are two sets of Red Cross cards, one naming Beatrice Lily Stock and one just Lily. Otherwise the details are the same.

Reference: WaW0416

Red Cross record card

Red Cross card with name Beatrice Lily

Red Cross record card

Red Cross card with name Lily

Griffithstown Baptist Church Roll of Honour

Griffithstown Baptist Church Roll of Honour showing names of Nurse Stock and Lily Stock. Thanks to Gethin Matthews.

Emily Charlotte Hill (Panichelli)

Place of birth: Hawarden, Flintshire

Service: Nurse, SWH, April – December 1915

Death: 1970, Cause not known

Notes: Emily was a trained nurse, probably trained at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London. At the outbreak of war she may have nursed in France. She joined Mrs Stobart’s Unit of the Serbian Relief Fund, and nursed in the tented hospital at Kragujevac. Mrs Stobart’s Unit was caught up in the Serbian Retreat with the Serbian army and refugees. They fled over the mountains of Montenegro and Albania in the depths of winter to the coast where a boat took them to Brindisi in Italy. She was awarded the Serbian War Medal and the Order of Charity of Serbia. Later in the war she became a midwife, and during the 1930s seems to have trained as a doctor. Many thanks to Carol Coles.

Reference: WaW0425

Red Cross record card

Emily Hill’s Red Cross record.

Newspaper report

Report of Emily Hill’s service and award of the Serbian medal of the Order of Charity. Flintshire Observer 21st October 1915.

Stobart Hospital Staff List

Staff List for the Stobart Hospital in Kragujevac. Emily is listed under ‘Nursing Sisters’. Note Mabel Dearmer’s name [qv]. Thanks to Carol Coles.

Gwenllian Lewis

Place of birth: Treharris

Service: Nurse, TFNS, November/Tachwedd 1914 – Jul

Notes: Gwenllian Lewis seems to have been working as a private nurse in the Midlands before she was called up in 1914. She spent three years at the 5th Northern General Hospital in Leicester before going to France in 1917. She remained there until early 1919 when she returned to Leicester. Her annual appraisals all refer to her as a ‘good nurse’ who was kind to patients. Her only misdemeanour was losing her TFNS badge, and having to pay for a replacement.

Reference: WaW0426

Annual Review

Gwenllian Lewis’s last annual report before being deployed to France.

Testimonial

TFNS testimonial for Gwenllian Lewis on resigning from the force.

Margaret Walker Bevan

Place of birth: Swansea

Service: Nurse, QAIMNS

Death: 1915 - 1919, Cause not known

Notes: Born in Swansea in 1883, Margaret trained as a nurse in Coventry and later worked in Barnsley. Early in 1915 she joined the staff of the Welsh Military Hospital, Netley. The Welsh Hospital was designed to be moveable, and it was soon packed up and sent, with its staff, to Deolali in India. Margaret worked there, and in Mesopotamia, until December 1919. After the war she became Matron of the new Memorial Hospital in Farnborough, Surrey.

Sources: People’s Collection Wales

Reference: WaW0429

Photograph

A ward at the ‘Welch’ Hospital, Deolali. Margaret is standing on the left. Thanks to Dave Gordon.

Photograph

Margaret in a hospital tent, possibly in Basra, Mesopotamia. Thanks to Dave Gordon

Magazine article

Description of the Welsh War Hospital, Netley. 'The Hospital' 24th October 1914.

Hannah Jane Davies

Place of birth: Mountain Ash

Service: Nurse, TFNS, 1918/06/13 – 1919/03/26

Notes: Hannah Davies was a probationer nurse at Milton Infirmary, Portsmouth when she was called up for Home Service at the 3rd Western General Hospital, Cardiff, where she was promoted to Staff Nurse. She seems to have contacted Influenza during February 1919, when she is described as being ‘pale’ and anaemic. It may be for this reason that she was discharged on March 1919. She continued to be attached to the renamed Territorial Army Nursing Service until she retired from this in 1936.

Sources: WO-399-10779

Reference: WaW0431

Summary record

Record of Hannah Davies’s work with TFNS.

Disability record [part]

Members of the forces were encouraged to fill in a disability statement on demobilisation so that they could use it as evidence in a future insurance claim.

Zillah Mary Jones

Place of birth: Llanpumsaint

Service: Nurse, TFNS, 1914 - 1919

Notes: Born in Carmarthenshire in the 1870s, Zillah trained at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London. She seems to have worked as a private nurse for many years, a job that included accompanying patients to Egypt and the West Indies, she was called up in 1914 to serve on the hospital ship Carisbrooke Castle. Some of the Welsh soldiers she cared for were delighted to find someone in authority who could speak Welsh. Whilst there she was promoted from Staff Nurse to Sister. According to her memoir, she had hoped to join the RN Nursing Service, having forgotten that she had already signed up to the TFNS. In October 1915 she was posted to the 4th Northern General Hospital, Lincoln, despite hoping for another Hospital Ship appointment. She records that her replacement on Carisbrooke Castle suffered from appalling sea-sickness. Whilst at Lincoln (where she remained for the rest of the War) she had a bicycle accident and broke her ankle badly; there is much correspondence about this on her War Office file. After demobilisation she went back to private nursing. Her memoir was published in 1964.

Sources: A Sister’s Log: A Nurse\\\'s Reminiscences. Gomerian Press, 1964

Reference: WaW0432

Zillah Jones

Sister Zillah Jones, frontispiece to her memoir ‘A Sister’s Log’

HMHS Carisbrooke Castle

Zillah Jones served on this ship 1914 - 1915.

Newspaper report

Report of Zillah Jones’s experiences on board ship.

Newspaper report [2]

Report of Zillah Jones’s experience on board ship [continued].

Medical board Title

One of the proceedings of the medical board when Zillah Jones broke her ankle.

Lydia Elizabeth (Bessie) Jones

Place of birth: Llanfrothen

Service: Nurse, 1914/5 - 1919

Death: 1942, Cause not known

Notes: Bessie Jones (born 1872) was her forties when the War broke out. She came from a large middleclass family, was involved in the community (she was a Lady Visitor at Penrhyndeudraeth Workhouse) and followed her father’s pack of otter hounds. Early in the War she joined the French Red Cross, and served with them until 1919. In the latter stages of the War she worked as an anaesthetist working long hours under bombardment and her hospital was damaged by shrapnel. She also witnessed an early blood transfusion. She wrote long letters to her sister Minnie Jones [qv], some of which were published in the local press. She also wrote some articles that were published in Welsh Outlook including Dawn in a French Hospital (October 1916) using the pseudonym Merch o’r Ynys. Her final posting was in Strasbourg; she returned home in August 1919. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre for her work in the Champagne region of France, and also the Military Medal. Bessie seems to have been fluent in English, Welsh and French, as well as being an accomplished pianist.

Reference: WaW0440

Newspaper letter

Letter to Bessie’s sister Minnie Jones describing a blood transfusion. Yr Herald Cymraeg 2nd April 1918.

Newspaper letter

Letter to Bessie’s sister Minnie Jones describing life in a field hospital under bombardment, and being suspected of being a spy, Cambrian News 16th August 1918 1.

Newspaper letter

Letter to Bessie’s sister Minnie Jones describing life in a field hospital under bombardment, and being suspected of being a spy, Cambrian News 16th August 1918.

Welsh Outlook

Beginning of Bessie Jones’s (Merch o’r Ynys) essay ‘Dawn in a French Hospital’. Welsh Outlook Vol 3 No 10 October 1916.

Newspaper report

Report of Bessie Jones’s return from France, and her performance in a concert. North Wales Chronicle 29th August 1919.