As
the Boer War ground on into the summer of 1900, the Illustrated London News disdainfully commented on female
volunteers for the nursing service whose ‘capacity for nursing consisted mainly
of their goodwill’. The Illustrated News
however was happy to report that Ireland in particular had ‘yielded a large
company of efficient ladies’ for service in the conflict.[1]
The ladies referred to were professional nurses and the paper ran a studio
portrait of a Mary Anna Davis of Waterford.
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| From the Illustrated London News |
When
Mary Davis became one of a handful of Irish nurses sent to South Africa in 1899,
it was reported that she already had six years’ service in various Irish
hospitals,[2]
and was a member of the Army Nursing Service Reserve.
Whether
or not Nurse Davis thought that she might be called to the colours we will
never know, but she had joined the Army Nursing Service Reserve in 1894.[3] Early
Boer successes in their campaign caused a huge mobilization of British troops
and a subsequent demand for professional nurses. Nurse Davis with a Mary Talbot
and a Sarah J. Caldwell started their journey to Africa from the North Wall in
Dublin on the 29th December 1899.[4]
Nurse
Davis’ war file offers little information on her service in Africa other than a
departure and a return date from the continent. Awards or citations (which
sometimes offer more information) are filed separately; this search was
initially frustrated as none were apparently issued. This discrepancy was
explained by a typographical error – the recipient’s medal roll had mistakenly
been filed under Nurse Anne Mary Davies on the list of Boer War nurses. On the
actual record the details match and show that Nurse Davis was awarded the Queen’s
South Africa (QSA) Medal and the King’s South Africa (KSA) Medal [5].
The
medal roll shows the place of issue, with Nurse Davis’s QSA being issued at Wynberg
General Hospital in 1901.[6]
Wynberg General Hospital was a mixture of canvas and huts and split into three
sections numbering over a thousand beds. Situated on the Cape, Wynberg was near
British Headquarters and was a well-equipped field hospital. The large number
of beds would all be needed as large numbers of the wounded, from battles such
as Belmont and Magersfontein, were brought in through the course of 1900.
The
KSA medal was issued at the general hospital in Kronstad, which was a remote
location adjacent to a contested railway line a world away from Wynberg. The
general hospital here was established in an old Dutch convent with most of the
casualties kept under canvas. In addition to the railway line and field
hospital, a Boer displacement camp was set up at the rail depot. One
commentator who would later succumb to disease himself said there was nothing at
Kronstad ‘except Enteric and Dysentery’.[7]
Another visitor to Kronstad, Lucy Deane, a member of the Boer War Concentration
Camp Commission, stated that Kronstad:
wasn’t a
‘place’, merely a railway centre and storage depot for military supplies, with
acres of bags of meal etc. covered with sail-cloth’. ‘The rest is wide dusty
tracks with spotty camps of various “Corps” of sorts, a tent hospital, tin
shanties, a few seedy bungalows and Wesleyan-Church-looking place, a native
location built entirely out of tin biscuit boxes flattened out and riveted
together, the whole enveloped in a permanent cloud of dust made worse by the
incessant galloping to and fro of men on horse-back[8]
Nurse Davis would serve as a member of the Princess
Christian’s Army Nursing Reserve in Africa until 1909. This organisation had
been disbanded in 1907 and upon her return from Africa applied to join its
successor, the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military
Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNS). One of the questions on the application asked
had she any experience of dealing with Enteric Fever. Her reply simply stated ‘9
years South Africa’.[9]
On
her return to Britain, Nurse Davis’ would have been awarded the 1914 Star for
her service from the early days of the conflict, she would have also received
the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Unfortunately her status as a reservist would see her instantly
dismissed from military service after receiving a modest gratuity for her
service. The war records show her living with a cousin in Essex who was
previously listed as her next of kin. Whether she worked in public nursing
during this period is unknown but likely; her military service resumed as a reservist
at Aldershot in February 1914.
Nurse
Davis was dismissed from service on the 8th of May 1914 but rehired again in a
temporary or a reserve function on the 6th of August just a few weeks after the
outbreak of WW1 and by the 17th of the same month was stationed at a field
hospital in France.[10]
Poison gas was introduced onto the Western Front in April 1915 and the Allied Forces
responded quickly to this new threat; by September 1915 Nurse Davis was serving
at a gas clearing station aiding gas victims.[11]
The
last recorded station of Nurse Davis in France was at Villa Tino, which was
part of General Hospital No. 24. Villa Tino was a convalescent unit for sick
nursing sisters and Nurse Davis was stationed here as nurse here rather than a
patient. October 1917 would see Nurse Davis transferred back to Ireland for
service in the George V Military Hospital in Dublin.[12]
Once
again Nurse Davis’ status as a reservist would impact her personal life and her
file contains a brief letter from the head of the QAIMNS stating that she
wouldn’t be entitled to a pension but was owed a gratuity. Her service however
was extended and she agreed to stay on to 1920 and eventual demobilisation.
Nurse
Davis encountered personal issues on her return to Ireland after she was
transferred to Limerick. While in Limerick she penned a letter to the matron of
the QAIMNS complaining that she felt bullied in Limerick by ‘Sinn Feiners’. The
letter also queried her pensionable status and stated that she was intending to
claim disability due to rheumatism. The matron of the QAIMNS sent Nurse Davis a polite but non-committal reply to her plea
for help.
Even years after demobilisation, Nurse Davis’ records contain another brush with the bureaucracy of the War Office. Now a civilian, Ms Davis and a Ms Ritchie Thompson travelled to attend the Royal Jubilee in 1935. Upon her return to Dunmore East where she was now living, she contacted the War Office under the impression that she could reclaim travel expenses. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case. This unexpected cost must have been a disappointment to a lady living on limited means.[13]
After
WW1 Nurse Davis had lived with a cousin in England. When this lady became a
widow she came to live with Nurse Davis in Dunmore East until her death in
1940. From local knowledge in Dunmore East it would seem that Nurse Davis was
always happy to lend her medical skills in the community and was very much to
the fore in 1942 when forty-seven survivors from the torpedoed SS Empire Breeze
were landed in Dunmore East.
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| Mary Anna Davis Image from War Records |
However,
the bureaucracy of the War office wasn’t finished with the nurse. Her war
records contain a flurry of letters from the War Disabled Help Department
trying to clarify her status as a military veteran. These letters begin in the
winter of 1958 and into the next year. The purpose of these letters is unknown
but they become increasingly more urgent in nature. It is likely that the
committee was trying to get the elderly Nurse Davis into a military hospital. The attempt would appear to have been
unsuccessful and Nurse Mary Anna Davis died in early 1959.[14]
[1] Illustrated London News, 10 Feb 1900.
[2] Waterford Standard, 30 Dec 1899.
[3] United Kingdom, National Archives, WO/399/2098 (Military file of Nurse Mary Anna Davis).
[4] Irish Times, 30 December 1899.
[5] National Archives, WO/100/229.
[6] Ibid.
[7] John White Aldred, physician,
1876–1901, J.W. Aldred, Boer War diary, 1900. University of Manchester Library.
GB 133 ENG MS 1544.
[8] Papers
of Lucy Anne Evelyn Streatfeild (née Deane), factory inspector and social
worker, 1893–1919. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. GB 152 LAS.
[9] National Archives, WO/399/2098.
[10] National Archives, WO/399/2098.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] The exact date of death is unknown, and unusually is not marked on the headstone.
