Page 22 - QARANC Vol 14 No 9 2014

20 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Blue plaque in honour of Dame Emma Maud McCarthy QAIMNS
Members of the Corps (Regular, Reserve and Association) gathered outside Number 47 Markham Square, Chelsea, London SW3 on Tuesday 23 June 2014 for the unveiling of a Blue Plaque to honour Dame Emma Maud McCarthy, Matron-in-Chief of the QAIMNS on the Western Front during the Great War. Col David Bates, ARRC, current Director Army Nursing Service unveiled the plaque, and there were short speeches from Ronald Hutton, Chair of English Heritage Blue Plaques Panel and Professor Christine Hallett, Director of the UK Centre for Nursing History, University of Manchester. The current owner of 47 Markham Square stated that he and his family were very honoured to have a blue plaque in honour of such an august person on their home. Dame Maud’s great niece, who is herself a nurse, gave some personal family reminiscences about her. Following the ceremony, we were invited by the residents of Markham Square to attend their summer garden party, which was held in their beautiful private garden in the centre of the square. There was much amusing discussion about how to identify more famous residents of Markham Square who might be deserving of a Blue Plaque!
Emma Maud McCarthy was born in Sydney, Australia on 22 September 1859 to William McCarthy, a solicitor, and his wife, Emma Mary, nee Beckett. After her father died in 1881, Maud helped her mother to raise her brothers and sisters, and finished her education to university entrance standard before travelling to England to train as a nurse at the London Hospital, Whitechapel. By 1899, she had become the Sister- in-charge of Sophia Ward at the London, and volunteered for nursing service in the Boer War, becoming one of six sisters from the London Hospital specially selected by Princess Alexandra to be her ‘own’ military nursing sisters. In South Africa she served with distinction in the Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service Reserve, and as well as receiving the Queen’s South Africa Medal, and the King’s South Africa Medal, she was decorated with the Royal Red Cross. On return to the UK in 1902, she was given a special decoration by
Queen Alexandra. After the formation of the QAIMNS in 1902, Maud was promoted to Matron in 1903, and held appointments at Aldershot, Netley and Millbank Hospitals. In 1910 she became Principal Matron at the War Office until 1914 and the outbreak of World War One. Maud did not become Director of Army Nursing Services during World War One, this post being held by Ether Hope Becher. However such was the huge nursing task on the Western Front and Europe generally, that a Principal Matron was required to run the nursing service, and it was this task that Maud undertook.
It was her service during World War One that made Maud’s reputation. She sailed on the first ship to leave England with the British Expeditionary Force, landing in France on 12 August 1914. Stationed in Abbeville she was appointed as Matron-in-Chief for France and Flanders, and took charge of nursing in the whole area from the English Channel to the Mediterranean, being directly responsible to General Headquarters. Nursing numbers on the Western Front grew from 516 in 1914 to over 6000 by the end of the war, and hundreds of thousands of allied and enemy casualties passed through the allied medical facilities. Maud remained in her post throughout the whole of the war, ensuring continuity, getting to know her nurses, and deploying them so that each medical facility had the mix of skills appropriate to its function.
She was a meticulous record keeper, and her war diary, kept throughout the war, is held at the National Archive. A contributor to the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald in 1914 described her as someone with ‘an absolutely wonderful gift for concentrated work, and a power of organisation that had made her invaluable in army hospital work’. One General stated that ‘she’s perfectly splendid, she’s wonderful, she’s a soldier. If she was made Quartermaster-General, she’d work it, she’d run the whole Army, and she’d never get flustered, never make a mistake. The woman’s a genius’.
Maud was 60 years old by the end of the war, and left the QAIMNS with many honours. She was awarded a GBE (Dame) in 1918 as well as a Bar to her RRC, the Florence Nightingale Medal, the French Legion d’Honneur, the French Medaille des Epidemies, and the Belgian Medaille de la Reine Elisabeth. From 1920 until 1925 she was appointed Matron-in-Chief of the Territorial Army Nursing Service, succeeding Dame Sidney Browne, RRC, and so returned to her roots as a reserve nurse twenty years previously.
Dame Maud moved into 47 Markham Square, (a five storey town house, built in 1852) in 1920, and lived there until her death in 1949. The close proximity of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, meant that she was always recognised by old soldiers when she was out and about in London.