The Frontier Nursing Service

The wartime editors of the Grey Coat magazine carefully (and very helpfully) recorded news of the doings of Old Greys, arranged by occupation. As I am compiling spreadsheets on each decade of GCH alumni this is a wonderful resource! I found it especially useful when writing a talk about the wartime activities of our alumnae.

The June 1940 (no.52) edition has an entry about Betty Boxall who wrote to the magazine about her work with the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky.

'She writes that she is enjoying the life out there; she and another nurse live in a small wooden house by themselves from which they travel over a big district on horseback doing maternity work and health visiting' 

I would never have known about Betty - or the Frontier Nursing Service - if not for this comment. 

Betty passed her final State Midwifery exam in 1937 and started work as Staff Midwife at Guy’s Hospital. After passing the Royal Sanitary Institute’s exam in public health she went to Kentucky to join the Wilderness Nursing Service as a midwife and health visitor. I haven’t been able to find out anything about how she came to go to Kentucky, although the service recruited mainly from the UK until after the war, because at the time only British midwives were also trained nurses. I wonder also if she knew how to ride before she went, or learned on the job. 

The Serivce had been founded in 1925 by the redoubtable Mary Breckinridge, who saw that the difficult lives of women living in the remote mountains of  Kentucky were made more difficult, and dangerous, because of the complete lack of medical care. Being a woman of vision and iron will she founded the service which save the lives of many women and babies. (i) 

After a little research, I found to my absolute delight that the University of Kentucky has a collection of papers relating to The Frontier Nursing Service, and their obliging archivist sent me all those related to Beatrice Boxall. (ii) 

We now have two of the letters Betty sent to Mrs Breckenridge and her colleagues after her return to England in 1942 to help with the War Effort. She asks about her horse Tommy, anxious to know if he has a new rider 

"Has Kermit found a way of keeping him in his stall. I hope not. Tommy loved to get out so much."

Her journey home was long and arduous with 3 months wait to leave the States, each permission seemed to depend upon another. ‘Still’, she wrote, ‘I can always make myself a raft & fly a shirt in the wind.’ When she did get a ship, the journey took 18 days and they picked up some merchant sailors who had been adrift in a boat for 4 days. 

"It had been snowing - it was frightful. It was the 4th time for some of them. It was an experience I shall never forget. I don’t think I had realized the seriousness of our trip until we had picked up these seamen."

In her reference the founder of the service Mrs Breckenridge called Betty:

"a woman of the highest integrity ... tactful, courteous and energetic ... fearless in the face of the kind of danger that comes with rough riding over swollen streams and through a steep, mountain country."

There is no picture of Betty that I can find, but this contemporary photo of one of the nurses on her way to a patient, gives an idea of her experiences (iii)

Once she had arrived home, Betty found life very different  

"I think by now I must have done all the things a good British citizen does not do. I’m getting tired of explaining that I don’t know any better! I saw some oranges in a shop & thought Whoopee – life isn’t going to be so bad after all – but I was soon disillusioned. You can’t imagine everybody’s surprise at my error, it was priceless. The oranges are for children under 7 years of age so I didn’t qualify. I haven’t been caught since. I also tried to buy a small lettuce – it was presented to me naked! One apparently has to provide the external wrappings oneself – I felt so very silly being faced with a poor little naked lettuce & a queue of people looking on in astonishment."

She learned how to handle an anti-aircraft gun, helped with planting food, and spent several evenings a week on firewatching. She tells her experiences so well 

"I must confess it takes me a great deal of time just to exist – getting up and performing my daily duties with the maternity and child welfare scheme & managing to feed myself takes a lot of my time and energy – you see all the restaurants out of the West End close at 5pm – so that you feed then or never, unless you can get someone else to feed you. Of course you can cook your own meals but then you become involved with the shopping (ie standing in a queue for ages at the end of a day’s work when most things have already been sold) Still, we all manage and have enough energy left with which to laugh."

I find this comment particularly poignant  

"I often wonder how I should have reacted in the blitz – I only feel half a Briton not having gone through it."

Reading her amusing, thoughtful letters makes me wish I could have known her. 

i. https://wednesdayswomen.com/the-mother-of-american-midwifery-mary-carson-breckinridge/

ii. Documents from Special Collections Research Center University of Kentucky

iii. https://frontier.edu/news/holding-on-to-the-star-celebrating-100-years-of-the-frontier-nursing-service-part-1-of-6/

The 'Austen' Bible

The Grey Coat Hospital School has been part of Westminster life since 1698, and on the current site in Greycoat Place since 1702. Thanks to this long history we have an archive of books from the 17th -20th centuries. Our oldest possession is a beautiful Bible from 1612, bound together with Sternhold and Hopkins’ Metrical Psalms, dated 1683.

There is no record of how this Bible came to the school, although there is a clue in the handwritten family genealogy of the Holman family from 1685 to 1757 on the blank pages at the back

Looking at the genealogy again recently, I recognised the unusual spelling of Curteis and went to the family tree I have been constructing as part of my research into the life of Elsie Day, who was appointed Head Mistress in 1874. Miss Day’s great grandfather was called Curteis Hale, after his mother Ann Hale née Curteis. This seemed a suggestive coincidence, especially as Ann’s mother was Sarah Holman. Closer comparison of the tree I had constructed and the notes in the Bible showed that they were certainly the same family, so it seems very likely that the Bible came to the school with Miss Day. 

It is a very satisfying conclusion - buit there is more. The first handwritten entry in the Bible reads:

Jane Austen Mother of ye said Ann died 3 of March

1685 in ye 47th year of her Age

John Austen father of ye said Ann died ye 13th July

1705 in ye 76th year of his Age

Knowing that Sarah Holman was the daughter of John and Ann, I searched for them on Ancestry, but more informtion was needed. Having discovered that the most authoritative work on the Austen family is Deirdre Le Faye's Chronology of Jane Austen, I was delighted to find that CUP has provided an excerpt of this work online, and it just happened to be the right section of the family tree to make the connection between the Jane Austen who died in 1685, and Jane Austen the novelist.

The daughter of the first Jane - Ann Austen (1672-1745) - married John Holman, making her Elsie Day's 5th great grandmother. She was also the great grand aunt of Jane Austen, as her brother John Austen (1665-1704) was Jane's great grandfather. Elsie Day and Jane Austen were 3rd cousins, 3x removed.

Maureen Stiller (Hon. Secretary, Jane Austen Society) informs me that Deirdre Le Faye 'lists John Holman and Anne Austen as descendants of John Austen III, but then notes only issue.' It is pleasning to know that those 'issue' were the progenitors of Elsie Sarah Day, first Head Mistress of the Grey Coat Hospital, and a pioneer of girls' education.

Of course, Jane Austen could not have known about her later relation, and I think it very unlikely that Elsie knew of her connection to Jane, but I like to think that each would have been pleased with their relation.

A sad tale of theft and murder

There have long been rumours of a ghost at The Grey Coat Hospital...

In I remember Madam – some Old Greys look back into the past Mahala Dorman recalled Elsie Day herself telling the tale to the girls at Halloween: 

"Madam would tell the story connected to the school, involving a nurse and a doctor. One of them was murdered in the Hospital and supposed to haunt a certain staircase."

And in Lessons from the past the sad tale of the murder of Mrs Martin, the infirmary nurse, by Henry Lockington the son of her friend is recounted. The rumour is that she haunts the long passage at the top of the main staricase - her room was off the corridor to the right. Vera Burrell reports that:

"after working late one evening, she came to the top of the stairs before leaving for home. She experienced the feeling of a cold breeze on the back of her neck and thought that someone was standing behind her. When she turned there was no-one there and, although she put the whole episode down to imagination, she was never happy to be in the building alone at night."

But what really happened?

We can read the original reports in the British Newspaper Archive. It was a particularly brutal murder, apparently provoked by greed. Henry Lockington was an alumnus of Christ's Hospital and a cabinet maker's apprentice. His victim was his mother's friend, and she had lent him a guinea only the day before.

Tuesday the coroner’s inquest sat on the body of the nurse that was murdered in the Grey-Coat hospital, and brought in their verdict wilful murder against the young lad who went to see her on Sunday night last, and borrowed a guinea from her, and then came again on the Monday night, when he did the murder.[Kentish Gazette - Saturday 13 March 1773]

The murder was very widely reported - the papers available in the archive are from Birmingham, Derby, Kent, Ipswich, Cambridge, Newcastle, Reading, Bath and Gloucester. The accounts are mostly very similar, mentioning his apprenticeship, that he knew his victim, and that he left his knife and hat behind. They also tend to dwell on the detail, which I will spare you.  He was quickly found and taken to Bow Street, and thence to Newgate.

The Newcastle Chronicle was a little more reflective, wondering how it was that such a young man - he was in his teens - should do this, apparently without motive:

There has not, of late years, occurred so shocking a circumstance as the murder of Alice Martin, the Grey-coat hospital, in Tothill-street, Westminster. Henry Lockington, a mere child, happy in his situation, wanting nothing (as he himself declared) deliberately takes a knife, goes almost in the face of day to the hospital, without the least attempt to screen from public notice, enquires for the wretched victim, finds her in her apartment, and instantly butchers her; and tho' from the moment he escaped, it does not appear that he afterwards took the least precaution to screen himself from justice. It may truly be said in the words of the indictment, that this lad was “instigated by the devil,” to effect so hellish a purpose in so very unaccountable a manner. [Newcastle Chronicle - Saturday 20 March 1773]

And the Gloucester Journal offers the interesting detail that he pretended to borrow the money on behalf of his mother, and that he did not seem to understand himself why he had done it.

The hat and bloody knife, and great coat likewise bloody, were produced. The evidence was extremely full, clear and circumstantial. The prisoner at last acknowledged the fact, saying he did not know what his intentions were other than to get money; yet he owned that that he was in no distress, and that he had plenty of every thing. When he was taken he had twenty-two guineas in purse, which he stole from Mrs Martin’s room. He is committed for trial at the Old Baily.  A pair of loaded pistols were produced, which were found in the prisoner’s room.

This confusion seems especially significant when we learn that he attempted suicide the day after his committal (prevented by the other prisoners), and that less than a month later he had starved himself to death in prison. He was obviously very disturbed in mind. 

Once all the details are known it is impossible to view this thoroughly miserable tale as fitting source for a creepy ghost story; the human story is uncovered, it isn't entertainment, it's just sad.

Renault, Vanessa A (1974) I remember Madam – some Old Greys look back into the past. Life at school between 1898-1917. Typescript held in Westminster Archives.

Burrell, Vera (1998) Lessons from the past: a history of The Grey Coat Hospital 1698-1998, Gresham Books, Henley on Thames

Hatbox Ephemera

Three Old Greys (GCH Alumnae) dropped in to visit last week.

They started secondary school in September 1975 and were curious to see their school 50 years later. We had a lovely chat, and a wander around the school, and they talked to some students from the Graphic Novels Club. 

They left me a hatbox for the Archive.

It is my favourite kind of gift, full of very personal items - not of any intrinsic value, but bursting with personal significance and memories.

First is the GCH summer boater, complete with weathered ribbon, and chewed elastic. The current students enjoyed trying it on.

Then the treasured pencil case with ink pen, knfe-sharpened pencil and that essential '70s rubber with stacking bricks (how I wanted one when I was 11!).  

And at the bottom, a report book, and vocab lists.

Small things, but full of wonder for today's year 8. They liked the boater, they wanted to write with ink, and they all though that to have permanent record of reports in a book might be a good and a bad thing...

But most of all, they liked talking to women who had been at their school and still loved it. 3 women who have been friends fro 50 years, all because of GCH.

A school history research blog

Hello. I'm the Librarian at The Grey Coat Hospital in Westminster, and have by small degrees become the de facto historian and (not really an) archivist. 

It's a fascinating place, with a history going back to 1698. Some way into my research journey I've decided to start this blog to share my discoveries: partly because I get very excited and need to tell people when I unknot a question; and partly to keep track of my research.

Currently, I am concentrating on the headship of Miss Elsie Day 1874-1910, but I will also post about my earlier research on the beginnings of the school.