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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
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

1 See Murray, Flora, Women as Army Surgeons: Being the History of the Women's Hospital Corps in Paris, Wimereux, and Endell Street, September 1914–October 1919(London, [1920])Google Scholar.

2 Marwick, Arthur, Women at War, 1914–1918(London, 1977), p. 150Google Scholar. Denise Riley argues for the Second World War that “women's war work, even when presented as the result of their collective heroic capacity, was seen as work done by women.” Riley, , “Some Peculiarities of Social Policy concerning Women in Wartime and Post-war Britain,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars,ed. Higonnet, Margaretet al. (New Haven, Conn., 1987), p. 269Google Scholar.

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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5 Almost any work performed by women during the war that was traditionally performed by men was at times included in the language of patriotic effort; e.g., a woman tram worker was described as “doing her bit. … She really is touched with red, white, and blue paint.” Stone, Gilbert, Women War Workers: Accounts Contributed by Representative Workers of the Work Done by Women in the More Important Branches of War Employment(New York, [1917]), p. 113Google Scholar. Some were more consistently represented explicitly as “war work” than others, however. Hospital workers have not been subject to as much scholarly historical attention as other groups of women war workers. Popular histories include Macdonald, Lyn, The Roses of No Man's Land(London, 1980)Google Scholar. Literary scholars have focused primarily on representations of voluntary nurses. See, e.g., Ouditt, Sharon, Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War(London, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tylee, Claire, The Great War and Women's Consciousness: Images of Militarism and Womanhood in Women's Writings, 1914–1964(London, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilbert, Sandra, “Soldier's Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women, and the Great War,” in Higonnet, et al., eds., Behind the Lines, pp. 197–226Google Scholar.

6 Following Joan Scott, I take “experience” to be a cultural construct that must be investigated through historical analysis. Scott, , “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17 (Summer 1991): 363–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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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.

16 Whitehead, Ian R., Doctors in the Great War(Barnsley, 1999), p. 108Google Scholar.

17 Beatrice Harraden, preface to Murray, , Women as Army Surgeons, p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

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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.

22 Whitehead, , Doctors in the Great War, p. 107Google Scholar. Because of their special status outside the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), it is difficult to assess the actual number of women doctors who worked in War Office sanctioned hospitals during the war, but they were certainly a small minority.

23 Ibid., p. 110.

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26 See esp. Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls. See also Woollacott, Their Lives Depend; and Downs, Manufacturing Inequality.

27 Vicinus, Martha, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago, 1985), pp. 96–97Google Scholar. The social status of women entering the nursing profession was a subject of great concern and debate; see also Baly, Monica E., Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Maggs, Christopher J., The Origins of General Nursing (London, 1983)Google Scholar; and Moore, Zeal for Responsibility. In military nursing, where regulations could be more specific than those that ranged over a large number of civilian hospitals, a candidate was required after 1888 to have “‘some person of social position’ testify ‘that her family is one of respectability and good standing in society.’“ Summers, , Angels and Citizens, p. 119Google Scholar. Summers documented that “the largest social category of the 466 candidates for admission [to Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service] between 1902 and 1914 comprised the 54 daughters of clerics, both Anglican and nonconformist; the next largest group was the 41 daughters of military officers; 35 candidates had fathers who were civilian medical practitioners. Nine women had fathers in whose occupations these categories overlapped: they were army medical officers, or naval surgeons, or army chaplains. Five women had fathers in the Indian Civil Service, four in the Mercantile Marine. Among the many other fathers' professions listed in the records were landowners, solicitors, War Office clerks, and officers of the police, customs, and inland revenue” (p. 228).

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36 Quoted in Macdonald, , Roses, p. 113Google Scholar.

37 For several perspectives, see Vicinus, Independent Women; Maggs, General Nursing; Moore, Zeal for Responsibility; Baly, Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy; Summers, Angels and Citizens; and Bowman, Gerald, The Lamp and the Book: The Story of the RCN, 1916–1966 (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

38 Imperial War Museum, Women's Work Collection (henceforth cited as IWMWWC), BRC 25 2/10.

39 F. Scott to “Syd & Girls,” 26 January 1915, Miss F. Scott, Imperial War Museum, Department of Documents (henceforth cited as IWM-DD), 77/15/1.

40 Thurstan, Violetta, Field Hospital and Flying Column: Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium and Russia (London, 1915), pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

41 Miss M. M. James diary, 7 November 1914, 18 November 1914, 23 December 1914, Miss M. M. James, Peter Liddle 1914–1918 Personal Experience Archive, University of Leeds (henceforth cited as PL), Women Collection.

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43 Brooke, Rupert, “Peace,” in The Poetry of War, 1914–1989, ed. Fuller, Simon (London, 1990), p. 10Google Scholar.

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.

64 IWM/WWC, BRC 10 2/14.

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

66 Leneman, Letter, The Times,4 July 1918Google Scholar, quoted in Leah, , “Medical Women in the First World War: Ranking Nowhere,” British Medical Journal 307 (18–25 December 1993): 1593Google Scholar. For more on the efforts for commissions by male doctors as well as the tensions that arose in wartime hospitals because female doctors were not commissioned or uniformed, see Whitehead, , Doctors in the Great War, esp. pp. 112–15Google Scholar.

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.

68 Helen Beale to Margaret A. Beale, 22 March 1916, BP.

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.

96 See Parry, and Parry, , Medical Profession, pp. 175, 185Google Scholar; Digby, , Making a Medical Living, pp. 290–92Google Scholar; Moore, , Zeal for Responsibility, p. 47Google Scholar.

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.

111 Leneman, , “Medical Women,” p. 1594Google Scholar.

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.