Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 5 the mystery nurse

A Red Cross nurse, circa 1916-1919

I doubt I will ever find out the identity of this Red Cross Nurse.

She was drawn by a patient recovering in the St John’s Hospital in Cheltenham and the picture will date from 1916 through to 1919.

I can’t be exactly sure of the date, the artist or of course the nurse, but it remains a powerful link to the past.

It’s one of 29 pictures, poems and comments left in the autograph book which had been started by Ms Rachel Wattis in the August of 1916.

So this could be her or perhaps Miss Margaret Adelaide Brown who is also mentioned in one of the comments.

But beyond that I am stumped.  Neither woman has as yet shown up in the historical records.

Some of the collection on display at the Remembrance Lodge

There is one reference to Miss Brown in the Red Cross data base from which I know she was engaged on November 1 1916 and that is it.

Not much to go on and the chances are our young woman is neither of these.

But this will not be the end of the search.

I know that the Red Cross produced a report on St John’s which lists some of the personnel, and there may be something more in the archive at the Cheltenham Local & Family History Library* who have already been most helpful.

Of course it is easy to become discouraged but I think it is well worth the effort to keep looking, if only to give a greater context to the 29 men and two nurses who appear in that autograph book.

Now there must have been hundreds of these books but as far as I know there are few now available to look at.

This one comes from the collection of David Harrop and may well form part of his forthcoming exhibition at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery which holds a fascinating array of memorabilia from both world wars.

Much of the material is the everyday stuff we pick up, keep for a while and then discard, like the porcelain souvenir tanks which will have graced a sideboard, the comic picture postcards sent from the Front or the more sombre official communications from the War Ministry.

Ms Rachel Wattis

Many allow you to track an individual through the Great War, and others like the autograph book offer tantalizing glimpses of the men and women as yet only half seen.

Still I have high hopes that some of the men in that Red Cross book will come out of the shadows and perhaps even my nurse.

We shall see.

Picture; unknown nurse from Blighty, the autograph book of St John’s Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham, courtesy of David Harrop

Entry from Blighty, © David Harrop

* Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/article/109250/Cheltenham-Local-and-Family-History-Centre