Hannah Davies (Hughes)

Place of birth: Brymbo

Service: Nurse, Not known / anhysbys

Notes: Hannah was a trained nurse who may have served in one of the Liverpool military hospitals, or in Chester. Whilst there she met and later married Pte Joseph Hughes, who also came from the Brymbo area. Many thanks to Nikki Dutton.

Reference: WaW0427

Photograph

Photograph of Hannah (left) and a friend playing tennis. Thanks to Nikki Dutton.

Photograph

Photograph of Hannah (seated) and a friend. Thanks to Nikki Dutton.

Margaret Lewis (Morris)

Place of birth: Merthyr Tydfil

Service: Nurse, TFNS, 1916 - 1919

Notes: Margaret Lewis trained in Cumberland, and was a Queen’s [district] Nurse before joining the staff at the 4th Southern General Hospital in Plymouth in November 1916. Margaret was posted to France in 1917, and served in several hospitals and casualty clearing stations. She was offered the chance to serve ‘in the East’ instead of being demobilised in 1919, but declined. She remained in the renamed TANS for several years, bring promoted from Staff Nurse to Sister in 1922 when she is described as ‘good tempered and tactful’. She resigned on marriage in 1928.

Reference: WaW0457

Document

Record of Margaret Lewis’s detail on discharge from TFNS

Document

Travel record for Margaret Lewis July 1919

Letter

Part of letter from Margaret Lewis to the War Office listing her postings.

Hilda Morgan

Place of birth: Newport

Service: Nurse, VAD

Notes: A trained nurse, Hilda served at Baldwin’s Auxiliary Hospital, Griffithstown . Her name appears on the Roll of Honour of Griffithstown Ebenezer Baptist Church.rn

Reference: WaW0428

Red Cross record card

Red cross record for Hilda Morgan

Red Cross record card [reverse]

Red cross record for Hilda Morgan [reverse]

Roll of Honour

Name of Hilda Morgan on Roll of Honour, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Griffisthtown. Thanks to Gethin Matthews.

Augusta Minshull

Place of birth: Atherstone

Service: Nurse, St John’s Ambulance, Scottish Women’s Hospital

Death: 1915/03/21, Kraguievatz, Typhus fever / Haint teiffws

Memorial: Chela Kula Military Cemetery, Nĭs, Nĭs, Serbia

Notes: Augusta Minshull was born in 1861 in Atherstone, near Manchester, but was brought up in Denbigh where her parents ran the Crown Hotel. She seems to have trained as a nurse after her mother’s death. She had extensive experience in hospitals in England and Dublin. In 1914 she seems to have travelled first to Belgium, and then to Kraguievatz, Serbia early in 1915. She died there in the epidemic of typhus, aged 53 or 54.

Reference: WaW0468

Augusta Minshull

Augusta’s photograph was collected by the Women’s Subcommittee as part of its collection of women who died during the war.

Newspaper report

Newspaper report of Augusta Minshull’s death in Serbia. Denbighshire Free Press 17th April 1915.

Obituary

Obituary of Augusta Minshull in the British Journal of Nursing, detailing her career.

Roll of honour

Roll of honour of members of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals who died overseas.

Betty Morris

Place of birth: Haverfordwest

Service: Nurse, VAD, 1915/05/27 – 1918/07/12.

Notes: Betty Morris joined the VAD in May 1915, working originally in Cottesmore Auxiliary Hospital, Haverfordwest. In November she was posted to France, initially to Boulogne but was soon promoted to ‘a larger hospital’, where at 20, she was the youngest nurse. She was a fluent French speaker, and remained with the VAD until July 1918. Excerpts from some of her letters home were published in the Haverfordwest and Milford Haven Telegraph.

Reference: WaW0478

Newspaper photograph Llun papur newydd

Photograph of Betty Morris in outdoor VAD uniform. Haverfordwest and Milton Haven Telegraph 16th February 1916

Newspaper report

Newspaper report of Betty Morris’s departure to France. Haverfordwest and Milton Haven Telegraph 10th November 1915rn rn

Newspaper report

Report of Betty Morris’s Christmas in France. Haverfordwest and Milton Haven Telegraph 16th February 1916

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Thomas

Place of birth: Seven Sisters

Service: Nurse, QAIMNSR, 1915 - 1920

Death: 1921/09/27, Neath ?, Tuberculosis / Y dicléin

Memorial: Seven Sisters , Glamorgan

Notes: Born in 1890, Lizzie attended Neath County School and trained as a nurse at Swansea General and Eye Hospital. She volunteered for QAIMNS Reserve in 1915, and was sent to Salonika via Egypt in November. It is said that the troopship she was on was torpedoed, and that she spent some hours in the water. She returned home in December 1916, and in January 1917 was given a reception by the local community, including the presentation of a medal and the singingof an embarrassingly effusive poem in Welsh. She spent the rest of the War, until she was demobbed in October 1920, at Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross in April 1919. Lizzie returned home to nurse in Neath, but died less than a year later of TB. Her name appears on the Seven Sisters War Memorial

Sources: Jonathan Skidmore: Neath and Briton Ferry in the First World War

Reference: WaW0477

Elizabeth Thomas

Lizzie Thomas in uniform

Poem / song

The embarrassing song performed at the reception for Nurse Thomas in January 1917. ‘Composed by Mr R. D. Harris and sung by Messrs. D. T. Davies and John Hughes’. Llais Llafur 6th January 1917

Army Form W. 3538

Lizzie Thomas’s new posting to Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham, 1st September 1917

Seven Sisters War Memorial

Photograph taken shortly after its opening 1920?

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.

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.

Ellen Catherine Clay (née Williams)

Place of birth: Penrhos

Service: Nurse (Commandant), Chairman WLA Holyhead, VAD, WLA/Byddin Dir y Merched

Notes: Born a farmer’s daughter in about 1866, Ellen Williams married a local doctor, Thomas William Clay, in 1898. At the outbreak of War she became Assistant Commandant of Holyhead VAD. She worked in Holborn Red Cross Hospital as well as in Anglesey; additionally she helped run the Red Cross Canteen at Holyhead Railway Station. Mrs Clay also chaired the recruitment committee for the Women’s Land Army. She died in 1935.

Sources: Holyhead and Anglesey Mail 7 May / Mai 2014

Reference: WaW0153

Ellen Catherine Clay

Ellen Catherine Clay VAD

Elizabeth Anne Montgomery Wilson

Place of birth: not known

Service: Nurse (Principal Matron), TFNS, 1914 - 1919

Notes: Elizabeth Montgomery Wilson was a veteran of the Boer War, in which she served as a superintendent in Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service. She was already Matron of Cardiff Infirmary, and became Principal Matron when it became the 3rd Western General Hospital in 1914. She reverted to the post of matron at the end of the War.

Reference: WaW0339

Elizabeth Montgomery Wilson

Elizabeth Montgomery Wilson in Margaret Lindsay Williams’s painting of the 3rd Western General Hospital. She is on the left.

London Gazette

Award of a bar to the Royal Red Cross announced in the London Gazette. Elizabeth Montgomery Wilson had already been awarded this decoration earlier in the War. London Gazette13th January 1920