Page 39 - QARANC Vol 18 No 2 2020

The Gazette QARANC Association 37
employment however dangerous or laborious nor was there any office connected with the sick which they deemed to be low or demeaning ... Miss Veysie remained behind until the termination of the war happily brought her labours to a close ... their services will live long in the grateful remembrance of the officers, seamen and marines who fought before Sevastopol’.
This is an extract from a letter sent home from Therapia by George Waller to his father:
‘I have come down here for change of air & it is a delightful place. From about 200 yards to the left of the Hotel you can see the opening of the Bosphorus where the Black Sea runs into it consequently we get the sea breeze every day as regular as possible. I am afraid I shall have to go back to Scutari tomorrow but I shall try to be allowed to come here again as this place is so infinitely superior to the other. We bathe almost out of the Hall door of the Hotel every morning.’
Gertrude Veysie’s work in the Crimea was acknowledged by the Sultan of Turkey who gave her a gold and diamond brooch which is now part of the Heritage Collection owned by the Association. Nightingale and Mary Stanley had similar brooches awarded, but it is not clear who else might have received one. In all 29 were made by Hunt and Roskell, a renowned jewellers and silversmiths on Bond Street in London. Miss Veysie also had a very poignant letter sent to her by a group of English Sailors in the form of a flag puzzle. The puzzle is in the form of the Union Flag. The flag is made up of different components and the sailors explain what they all mean and how to create them with the puzzle pieces. This is also in the Association Heritage Collection.
It cannot be claimed that the nursing reform movement at this time was solely due to the influence and example of Florence Nightingale, nor can it be assumed that the training she started at St. Thomas’ Hospital was the first training provided for nurses in Britain. There were earlier English nursing reformers like Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker philanthropist who founded the Training Institution for Nursing Sisters in 1840, and several Anglican sisterhoods, all of which had been established by 1848. One of these was the Sisterhood of St John’s House. Monica Baly, in her work on Nightingale, also indicated that in the earlier part of the century the standard of nursing had been improving. She, too, acknowledges the contribution of
the Anglican sisterhoods, specifically mentioning St John’s House.
St John’s House nursing system was a primary model for Nightingale when she set up her school at St Thomas’, and the Lady Superintendent of St John’s House, Mary Jones, was to become one of Nightingale’s dearest friends. Gertrude Veysie and the other St John’s House nurses who had worked in the Crimea returned and brought back their experiences, skills and knowledge to add to the discussions and discourse taking place.
During the Crimean campaign the nurses moved from location to location either to visit, or to work, or to be cared for when they themselves were sick. Gertrude Veysie and Mary Erskine nursed Florence Nightingale at Therapia when she became sick with a fever which is thought to have been caused by brucellosis. There is ample evidence of correspondence between the nurses working in different locations, including Nightingale to Mary Erskine at Therapia. Nightingale herself acknowledges that she gained many ideas about nursing by seeing the ways in which nurses in the other hospitals worked and were managed.
A large number of nurses went to the Crimea and brought back ideas and experiences. Many were not in a position to influence nursing reforms either in nursing generally or nursing in support of the military. Many of the more educated and well-placed ladies were able to be part of the discourse that followed the Crimea and each used different avenues or different people they knew to get their views across. The sharing of ideas and experiences both during the war in the Crimea and afterwards when the nurses returned was an important factor in shaping the ideas of Nightingale and others taking forward nursing reforms. It was also an important factor in the shaping of nursing support to the British Army.
The Union Flag puzzle sent to Gertrude Veysie
The hospital at Therapia
The Boer War presented by Olivia Barnes and Keiron Spires
Florence Nightingale Shore served in both the Boer War and World War 1. Miss Shore’s father was a cousin of Florence Nightingale and Florence Nightingale was Miss Shore’s Godmother. Miss Shore was born on 10 January 1865 in Stamford, Lincolnshire and grew up in Derbyshire. She was educated at the High School York and in Brussels. In 1891 she travelled to China to work as a nursery nurse, returning to the England in 1893. This must have been a real undertaking for a young lady and shows her adventurous spirit. At the age of 28 she started her nurse training at The Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, completing her training in 1896. She also completed training in midwifery and in district nursing. Miss Shore would have trained in the style now known as the ‹Nightingale’ system. This was a three year structured programme with theoretical and practical elements.
In the Army most nursing care at this time was being undertaken by orderlies. We might imagine that orderlies were unskilled and lacked the compassion of the female nurses, however it is evident from archival records that the training syllabus of the orderlies closely matched that of nurses, and many developed high levels of knowledge and expertise. Under the Cardwell reforms, soldiers spent less time in the Regular full-time Army and longer in the Reserves. This meant that many of the most capable orderlies left the service. Many nurses found serving in the Army Nursing Service very difficult and the turnover was very high. It was not until the Boer War in 1899 that things began to change.
The Boer War had started in 1899 and was the first conflict that saw British Army Nurses deployed in significant numbers. It was a pivotal point in the development of Army nursing laying the foundations of what was to become the format for Army nursing in future conflicts. On 18 May 1900 Miss Shore joined the Princess Christian’s Army