Page 7 - Luce 2016

Australia R emembers ANZAC 1915-2015

By 1916 the need for medical staff was desperate and women
(while denied official Royal Army Military Corps rank and
status) were permitted to join War Office-sanctioned military
hospitals in Britain and overseas. While Helen Sexton was in
France, Dr Vera Scantlebury (1907) seved at London’s Endell
Street Military Hospital, founded by British women’s medical
pioneers Dr Flora Murray and Dr Louisa Anderson. ‘Endell
Street’ was the only military hospital run by women within
the British Army during the Great War, growing over time to
over 180 (overwhelmingly female) staff members. Run on
military lines, it was a tough apprenticeship for Vera as she
watched Murray and Anderson work themselves to the point
of exhaustion. Their example would strongly influence her
post-war leadership in infant care. She and more than two
thousand other Australian women served as nurses overseas,
where they were able to experience some of the freedoms that
wartime necessity allowed. For some, that freedom was to be
retained after the war in favour of the conventional expectation
of marriage and motherhood.

The Red Cross organisation provided opportunity for other JCH
women to help the war effort abroad. Among them was Ethel
Bage (1907), Senior Student of the College in 1909, who served
in Queen Mary’s Army Auxillary Corps. Vera Scantlebury’s Certificate presented to Principal Enid Joske for
wartime service in the Civil Defence Organisation
diary provides a glimpse of her wartime camaraderie with her
JCH contemporary Ethel in London. In one recollection she role in trying to secure a lasting peace from the ashes of the
used the distinctive ‘coo-ee’ of the Australian bush to wake up ‘war to end wars’. Ethel’s sister Freda Bage (1901), who had
Ethel from outside her Baker Street window late in the night. served as President of the University Women's War Work
In London they met up with friends such as Jessie Traill, who groups, also served as the first Australian female representative
went to London with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) to the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations,
and worked as a nurse with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial as hopes for a system of international arbitration to end global
Military Nursing Service. A renowned artist, Jessie was not an conflict were initially high. The daughter of Trinity’s first
alumna of the College but had a lifelong association through Warden, Valentine Leeper was among those JCH women who
these friendships and her lifetime friendship with Enid Joske worked tirelessly to promote diplomatic solutions to conflict
(1909), Principal of the College from 1927 to 1952. Her through the League. As Europe and Asia moved towards a
influence on JCH may be found in the works that still adorn second global war, she watched the rise of Japan, Mussolini
our walls: during the Great War she was ‘Sister Traill’ and ward and Hitler with dismay.
matron for many hundreds of patients and staff.
Miss Joske was among many whose public service was
With sixty thousand dead, and more than a hundred and shaped, at least in part, by the impact of war. She recalled
fifty thousand other Australian soldiers wounded and the Sunday evening during her time as Principal when the
psychologically damaged by the time of the Armistice, the women of the College heard ‘on September 3rd, 1939… the
Great War cut a hole in the lives of the nation. For the women tragic news broadcast of the declaration of war.’ Miss Joske
of Janet Clarke Hall, their lives were changed forever by the loss reflected that during the Second World War the ‘whole
of friends and family. The Bage sisters lost their brother Robert, life of the nation and of the University and of the colleges
killed at Gallipoli less than two years after receiving the Polar changed.’ Along with rationing, first aid lectures and air raid
Medal for his work with Sir Douglas Mawson in Antarctica. It drills, the College was blacked out at night by curtains with
is impossible to know why Ethel and Freda never married but chicken wire affixed to windows to protect from bomb blasts.
it is clear that for these sisters, as for many other women, the It would prove to be a global war even longer and bloodier
loss of their brother and of many of their male friends during than the Great War – and with the entry of Japan became for
the war had a lasting impact. Long-serving Principal Miss Enid Australia a war of national survival. It was little surprising that
Joske was twenty-four years old when the Great War broke out. the College celebrated Victory over Japan with a celebratory
She was among that generation who knew the young men who dinner (‘where tables were decorated with red Japonica, blue
set off with the AIF and never returned. As she never married, Forget-me-nots and white Plum blossom’) and dancing, and
the College (in words of alumna and historian Dr Alison Patrick afterwards with services of thanksgiving held in Chapel and
(Hamer 1939) ‘became her life’. at the Shrine of Remembrance. During the Second World
War, as restrictions were lifted on official military service,
As the Great War dominated the psychological landscape and JCH women again played their part. Among these women
Australia became a nation of memorials, JCH women saw a was Captain Mavis Freeman (1925) who had a distinguished

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