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Wars in the Wards: The Social Construction of Medical Work in First World War Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2013

Janet S. K. Watson
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Extract

When the Imperial War Museum was founded in early 1917, the subcommittee in charge of collections related to “Women's Work” solicited contributions from Dr. Flora Murray of the Military Hospital at Endell Street in London. Murray and Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson had formed the Women's Hospital Corps and, with the French Red Cross, opened hospitals in Paris and Wimereux in the early stages of the war. After successful cooperation with British military and medical authorities overseas, they were asked to open the Endell Street facility, the only hospital operating under the auspices of the War Office to be staffed entirely by women. Murray refused to cooperate with the museum committee “because she wished her hospital to be considered purely professionally as a military hospital and not as women's war work.”

This was not just rhetoric of women's equality from someone who described herself as “one of Mrs. Pankhurst's lot,” but reflected the new emphasis on professionalism that had developed in the preceding fifty years. The First World War provided new opportunities for work in a variety of fields more or less closely related to the perpetuation and advancement of the armed conflict; scholars have recently focused in particular on working-class women in industry and paramilitary organizations. Though opportunities for educated women increased throughout civil society, my focus here is on work that was perceived as explicitly on behalf of the war effort, with a special concentration on three populations of women working in hospitals: doctors, trained nurses, and volunteers.

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Research Article
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 2002 , pp. 484 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2002

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References

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3 Perkin, Murray, Women as Army Surgeons,p. 134Google Scholar. For more on professionalization, see Harold, , The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880(London, 1989)Google Scholar; and MacLeod, Roy, ed., Government and Expertise: Specialists, Administrators and Professionals, 1860–1919(Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar. Perkin argues that “the more prestigious occupations, chiefly the clergy, law and medicine, laid claim to the exclusive label of ‘profession,’ which came to mean an occupation which so effectively controlled its labour market that it never had to behave like a trade union” (p. 23).

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8 See, e.g., her sister-in-law's assertion that “there is nothing a woman could help the country more in doing than mending its men.” Sylvia Beale to Helen Beale, 16 August 1915, Beale Family Papers, Cobnor Cottage, Chidham, Chichester (hereafter cited as BP).

9 A “VAD” was technically the detachment itself; its members, however, referred to themselves and were regularly referred to as VADs.

10 Helen Beale diary, 17 August [1915], BP.

11 When Bill Beale was killed, Maggie wrote Helen that Bill had been “quite the most promising of the 16 cousins who joined.” This probably refers only to men in the military; a significant number of women in the family were also active in the war effort. Margaret S. Beale to Helen Beale, 16 March 1916, BP.

12 Helen Beale's Certificate of Discharge from VA Detachment 68, Sussex, 30 January 1918, records service from June 1911 to 20 January 1918, BP.

13 See Summers, Anne, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–1914 (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

14 Joint War Committee reports document 70,352 members in 1914, of whom 46,791, or 67 percent, were women, but “What was to be expected of these women … remained a largely unanswered question.” Summers, , Angels and Citizens, p. 253Google Scholar.

15 I am extremely grateful to the late Joan Edom, niece of Helen Beale, for the generous access she permitted me to her family's papers, as well as for our discussions and correspondence. I am also grateful for the assistance and continuing support of Mrs. Edom's daughter-in-law, Gillian Edom.

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21 She was reportedly told, “My good lady, go home and sit still"; see, e.g., Lawrence, Margot, Shadow of Swords: A Biography of Elsie Inglis (London, 1971), p. 98Google Scholar; Beauman, Marwick, Deluge, p. 89Google Scholar; Nicola, , A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel, 1914–39 (London, 1983), p. 16Google Scholar. See also McLaren, Eva Shaw, A History of the Scottish Women's Hospitals (London, 1919), p. 5Google Scholar; Mitchell, David, Monstrous Regiment: The Story of the Women of the First World War (New York, 1965), p. 178Google Scholar; Bell, E. Moberly, Storming the Citadel: The Rise of the Woman Doctor (London, 1953), p. 152Google Scholar.

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23 Ibid., p. 110.

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44 Coleman, Helena, “Tis Not the Will That's Wanted,” quoted in Khan, Nosheen, Women's Poetry of the First World War (New York, 1988), p. 141Google Scholar.

45 On siblings, see Woollacott, Angela, “Sisters and Brothers in Arms: Family, Class, and Gendering in World War I Britain,” in Gendering War Talk, eds. Cooke, Miriam and Woollacott, Angela (Princeton, N.J., 1994), pp. 128–47Google Scholar; and Meyers, Judith, “‘Comrade-Twin’: Brothers and Doubles in the World War I Prose of May Sinclair, Katherine Anne Porter, Vera Brittain, Rebecca West, and Virginia Woolf” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1985)Google Scholar.

46 Billington, Mary Frances, The Roll-Call of Serving Women: A Record of Woman's Work for Combatants and Sufferers in the Great War (London, 1915), p. 194Google Scholar; Liddle, Peter H., Voices of War: Front Line and Home Front, 1914–1918 (London, 1988), p. 84Google Scholar.

47 The primacy of “nurse” as an available identity for female war workers is demonstrated by the newspaper photograph of Georgie Fyfe being awarded the Croix de Guerre for her refugee work, which misidentifies her an “an English nurse.” Daily Sketch, 15 December 1917; Miss G. S. Fyfe, IWM-DD, 86/64/1. See also Ouditt, , Fighting Forces, Writing Women, p. 9Google Scholar.

48 Miss R. B. Manning diary, 21 March 1915, Miss R. B. Manning, IWM-DD, 80/21/1.

49 Sybil Field to Helen Beale, 7 January [1916], BP.

50 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 10 January 1916, BP.

51 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 10 February 1915, BP.

52 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, undated [August 1915], BP; Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 27 August 1915, BP; Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 11 December 1915, BP.

53 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 13 November 1915, BP.

54 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 17 September 1915, BP.

55 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 18 November 1915 (section dated 20 November), BP.

56 Bill Beale to Helen Beale, 15 August 1915, BP.

57 Daisy Beale to Helen Beale, 13 August 1915, BP.

58 Sam Beale to Helen Beale, undated [Spring 1916], BP.

59 Sam Beale to Helen Beale, 21 October 1915, BP.

60 Sylvia Beale to Helen Beale, 7 November [1915], BP.

61 Margaret S. Beale to Helen Beale, 25 August 1916, BP; Sybil Field to Helen Beale, 23 March 1919, BP.

62 Elsie Maxwell Ogilvie to Rhoda, January 1916, Mrs. Elsie M. Carlisle, PL, Women Collection; Miss R. B. Manning diary, 19 May 1917, Miss R. B. Manning, IWM-DD, 80/21/1.

63 Wilfred Nevill to Amy Nevill, 3 October 1915, Captain W. P. Nevill, IWM-DD, Con Shelf.

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65 Spiers, Reader, Professional Men, p. 65Google Scholar; Edward, M., The Army and Society, 1815–1914 (London, 1980), p. 160Google Scholar.

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67 See Baly, Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy; also Bullough, Vern, Bullough, Bonnie, and Stanton, Marietta, eds., Florence Nightingale and Her Era: A Collection of New Scholarship (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

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69 The literature on the military during the First World War is copious. See, e.g., Simkins, Peter, Kitchener's Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–1916 (Manchester, 1988)Google Scholar; Beckett, Ian F. W. and Simpson, Keith, A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War (Manchester, 1985)Google Scholar; Leed, Eric J., No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Winter, Denis, Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London, 1979)Google Scholar. Popular memoirs, like Graves's, RobertGood-Bye to All That (London, 1929)Google Scholar, also devoted considerable attention to relations between wartime volunteers and the regular army.

70 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 11 March 1914, BP.

71 All military nurses were considered Sisters.

72 British Red Cross Society and St. John's Ambulance Association, Joint War Committee Reports, 1914–1919 (1921), p. 80Google Scholar, British Red Cross Society Archives, Barnett Hill, Guildford.

73 Miss M. W. Cannan, IWM-DD, P.360, pp. 10–11.

74 Adam, Ruth, A Woman's Place, 1910–1975 (London, 1975), p. 56Google Scholar.

75 Miss M. Denys-Burton diary, pp. 3–4, Miss M. Denys-Burton, IWM-DD, 92/22/1. Denys-Burton went on to explain that “the trained nurse is always called ‘big sister’ but she does not like it much, and always calls us Miss So and So, with great care.”

76 Adam, , Woman's Place, p. 55Google Scholar.

77 Murray, , Women as Army Surgeons, p. 205Google Scholar.

78 Margaret S. Beale to Helen Beale, 25 November 1914, BP.

79 Margaret S. Beale to Helen Beale, 19 May [1916], BP.

80 Miss K. Freshfield diary, 25 December 1915, Miss K. Freshfield, PL, Women Collection.

81 Miss M. Denys-Burton diary, p. 6, Miss M. Denys-Burton, IWM-DD, 92/22/1.

82 Sidney Holland of the London Hospital, quoted in Parry, and Parry, , Medical Profession, pp. 182–83Google Scholar.

83 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, undated [August 1915], BP.

84 Margaret A. Beale to Helen Beale, 22 August [1915], BP.

85 Margaret A. Beale to Helen Beale, 26 August [1915], BP.

86 Beginning in 1915, VADs nursing in military hospitals were paid small salaries. As most VADs began as unpaid workers in local hospitals, significant self-selection occurred. Maggie wrote Helen that “there is much jealousy on the part of the real trained sisters, because you, partially trained ones [sic], get half as much salary as they do. I dare say this is a sore point!” Margaret S. Beale to Helen Beale, 14 January 1916, BP.

87 Sybil Field to Helen Beale, 24 March [1916], BP.

88 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 27 August 1915, BP.

89 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 3 October 1914, BP; Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 17 September 1915, BP; Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 25 November 1915, BP; Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 17 September 1915, BP; Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 23 February 1916, BP; Margaret S. Beale to Helen Beale, 25 August 1915, BP; Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 5 December 1918, BP.

90 Helen Beale to Margaret S. Beale, 24 October 1915, BP.

91 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 11 July 1916, BP.

92 M. B. Peterkin diary, 15 May 1915, Miss M. B. Peterkin, IWM-DD, 77/60/1.

93 Alice Slythe diary, 1 February [1916], Miss Alice Slythe, PL, Women Collection.

94 Alice Slythe diary, 23 January [1916], Miss Alice Slythe, PL, Women Collection.

95 Ibid.

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97 Typescript memoir, Mrs. Vaughan Phillips, PL, Women Collection.

98 Alice Slythe diary, 7 August [1916], Miss Alice Slythe, PL, Women Collection.

99 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 29 March 1916, BP.

100 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 21 April 1916, BP.

101 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 17 June 1916, BP.

102 Dorothy Higgins to her mother, 21 February 1917, Miss D. E. Higgins, IWM-DD 86/73/1.

103 Evelyn Proctor to her mother, 1 January [1918], Miss E. H. Proctor, IWM-DD 88/16/1.

104 IWM-WWC, BRC 10 2/10.

105 IWM-WWC, BRC 10 3/3.

106 Katharine Furse to Madge, 2 May 1917, Dame Katharine Furse, PL, Women Collection.

107 IWM-WWC, BRC 10 4/8.

108 Furse, Katharine, Hearts and Pomegranates: The Story of Forty-Five Years, 1875–1920 (London, 1940), pp. 345–46Google Scholar.

109 IWM-WWC, BRC 25 0/4.

110 Whitehead, , Doctors in the Great War, p. 115Google Scholar.

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112 Similarly, though female enrollment in medical schools rose during the war from 10 to 40 percent, these figures contracted again after the war as schools returned to earlier policies that denied admission to women. Whitehead, , Doctors in the Great War, pp. 117, 119–20Google Scholar.

113 IWM-WWC, BRC 25 2/7.

114 Summers, , Angels and Citizens, p. 290Google Scholar.

115 The VAD scholarship scheme ultimately funded training in a variety of positions for 557 women. British Red Cross Society and St. John's Ambulance Association, Joint War Committee Report, p. 203Google Scholar. Furse, like the women she commanded, also moved on. She served from 1917 as commandant of the newly created Women's Royal Naval Service and after its disbanding in 1919 spent the rest of her active life working for the Girl Guides.