List of nurses who died in World War I

An estimated 1,500 nurses from a number of countries lost their lives during World War I.^[1] Some died from disease or accidents, and some from enemy action.

Australia

29 Australian nurses died from disease or injuries; 25 of these died on active service, and 4 died in Australia from injuries or illness sustained during their service.^[2] Most of these nurses were serving in the Australian Army Nursing Service; however, a small number were serving with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, one of a number of British Army nursing services during World War I.^[2] Other Australian women made their own way to Europe and joined the British Red Cross, private hospitals or other allied services.^[3]

Nurses serving with the Australian Army Nursing Service

Nurses serving with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve

|- |Edith Blake |26 February 1918 |drowned |English Channel ^[37] |-

Volunteers serving with the Australian Red Cross

Canada

53 Canadian nurses lost their lives during the war.^[38] In one incident, on 27 June 1918, 14 nurses were killed when their hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed while travelling from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool, England.^[39] The nurses who died were:

Netherlands

Rosa Vecht (18 July 1881 – 23 January 1915) died when she was injured by shrapnel at Veurne in West Flanders, while saying goodbye before a planned evacuation. She died after an operation to amputate her leg.^[40]

New Zealand

16 New Zealand nurses died during the war, including 10 who died in the sinking of the troop ship SS Marquette.^[41]

Romania

Ecaterina Teodoroiu was a Romanian nurse who enlisted as a soldier and died on 3 September 1917 during active service.^[43]

United Kingdom

Most nurses were part of the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS). At the start of the war there were fewer than 300 nurses; four years later when the war ended it had over 10,000 nurses in its ranks.^[44] According to the British Red Cross, "128 nursing members, 11 general service members and six Joint War Committee hospital members were killed."^[45]

Edith Cavell was executed for treason by a German firing squad on 12 October 1915 in Brussels, Belgium.

Marjory Eva May Edwards served for three and a half years in Britain and France and died of measles in England on 4 January 1918. Her name is listed on the village war memorial at St Mary's Church at Streatley, Berkshire.^[46]

Catherine Miller was working at the 1st Western General Hospital in Liverpool, England when she died on 24 December 1918. She had contracted malaria while serving in Russia.^[47][48]

Scottish nurses

An estimated 150 British nurses were killed during World War 1. Of those killed 40 were Scottish. Four of the nurses were killed by enemy action including Agnes Murdoch Climie, a staff nurse who trained at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.^[49] Miss Climie was a member of the Territorial Force Nursing Service and based at a general hospital in France while she was on the staff of the 4th Scottish General Hospital, Stobhill. Miss Climie was not on duty during the bombardment but returned to her ward and was killed while singing to a patient who was nervous.^[50] Miss Climie was killed instantly while in the same incident Sister Mabel Milne of Perth, who trained at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and was attached to the 2nd Scottish General Hospital died a short time after being wounded. Two Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), Miss D Coles (2nd Scottish Hospital) and Miss E Thompson (1st Scottish Hospital) were also killed.^[51]

Three Scottish nurses drowned while serving on hospital ships during WW1. A further 33 Scottish nurses died from diseases acquired while on military service.^[52] Two nurses were members of the regular Military Nursing Service and the others were members of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve and the Territorial Force Nursing Service.^[53]

In March 1915, four Scottish nurses died in Serbia of typhus.^[54] They were part of a group of Scottish women – nurses, doctors and volunteers – who had travelled to Serbia to establish Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service:

• Margaret Neill Fraser
• Louisa Jordan
• Augusta Minshull
• Bessie Sutherland

A memorial with the names of the 40 Scottish nurses killed in WW1 was erected by members of the Military Nursing Service, and unveiled at the Cathedral of St Giles in Edinburgh in 1921. The memorial is a bronze tablet set in green marble.^[53]

HMT Osmanieh sinking, 1917

On 31 December 1917, the British troop ship HMS Osmanieh (1906) struck a mine near the entrance to Alexandria Harbour. The ship sank in under 10 minutes and almost 200 service personnel died. Among the dead were eight nurses.^[55] Two of them belonged to the Queen Alexandria’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS):

• Nellie Hawley
• Dorothea Roberts

and the rest belonged to the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD):

• Gertrude Bytheway
• Una Duncanson
• Lilian Midwood
• Hermione Rogers
• Catherine Ball
• Winifred Brown

Five Sisters memorial

York Minster’s Five Sisters window is the only memorial in the UK dedicated to all the women of the British Empire who lost their lives in World War I.^[56][57] Ten oak screens were added to the north side of the St Nicholas Chapel. They list the name of every woman who died in the line of service during WWI. An inscription thereon reads, “This screen records the names of women of the Empire who gave their lives in the war 1914–1918 to whose memory the Five Sisters window was restored by women”.^[58] There are 1,513 names listed on the screens.^[59]

United States

Nurses Clara Ayres and Helen Burnett Wood were the first two women to be killed while part of the United States military when they died on 17 May 1917, following an accident on board USS Mongolia.^[60]

Helen Fairchild died in France on 18 January 1918, from post-operative complications following surgery for an ulcer.^[61]

Lucy Nettie Fletcher (1886-1918) was the first Red Cross nurse in General Pershing's army to die in the performance of duty.^[62]

References

• Williams, Shirley (2 April 2014). "World War One: The many battles faced by WW1's nurses". BBC News. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
• British Red Cross (2022). "VAD casualties during the First World War" (PDF). British Red Cross. Retrieved 4 June 2022.

This page was last edited on 24 January 2024, at 20:39