Nurse Hannah Maughan
Hannah Maughan was born on 24 April 1885 at Ryton, County Durham just 40 miles from Kirkhaugh, to Joseph and Margaret (nee Walton) Maughan.[1] Her brother Thomas Walton Maughan was born two years later and then tragically their Mother Margaret died in 1888. Joseph married Emma Edith Rowell and together they had three children: Edward Rowell (born 1892), Edith Mary (born 1893) and Noel George (born 1895).[2] Hannah, the eldest of Joseph’s five children, completed her schooling at Central Newcastle High School. She had to wait until she was 21 years (minimum age requirement) before she could commence her nursing studies. Hannah studied at the Queen Charlottes Lying-In Hospital and Midwifery Training School. ‘Lying-In’ is an archaic term meaning “the state attending and consequent to childbirth.”[3] After completing the midwifery course at Queen Charlottes Hannah worked at Durham County Hospital where she completed her training to be a State Registered Nurse (SRN).[4] As a fully trained Nurse Hannah worked at the Harrogate Infirmary which prior to the war was a small facility with 55 beds and less than 20 nursing staff.[5]
War broke
out in July 1914 and Hannah joined the Territorial Force Nursing Service
(TFNS) on 5 December 1914 aged 29½.[6]
The Territorial Force Nursing Service commenced in 1908 when the newly
formed Territorial Nursing Council made provision for 23 territorial force
hospitals in towns and cities throughout England.[7]
It should be noted that the TFNS was separate to the Army Medical Service
which together with Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service
(QAIMNS) provided nursing care in Military hospitals at home and abroad. At the
outbreak of World War I there were 2,738 TFNS nurses ready for service in the territorial
force hospitals in the UK. As the war progressed some 8,000 nurses were
enrolled in the TFNS.[8]
While the majority of the TFNS nurses spent their wartime service in the UK,
some two thousand TFNS nurses served overseas alongside their QAIMNS colleagues
in military hospitals and casualty clearing stations in France, Malta, Salonika,
Egypt, Mesopotamia and East Africa.[9]
Hannah was one of these nurses.
On 8 August
1915 Major Hume RAMC of the War Office examined Nurse Maughan and found her to
be “in good health and quite fit for foreign service.”[10]
Hannah left Britain on 8 October 1915 on the HMHS Morea, a P&O Liner
that had just been commissioned as a Hospital Ship.[11]
The ship took 11 days to reach Egypt where Hannah disembarked. The story that
has been passed down is that the group of Nurses “were en-route to Salonika to their
posting and got stuck in Egypt so decided to take a trip to see the pyramids. She
always claimed it was the most uncomfortable mode of transport she ever tried.”[12] Nadia
Atia described the taking of photos of nurses on camels in front of the sphinx
and pyramids, such as the one in Figure 1, as the ‘obligatory travelogue photograph’.[13]
Like many of the letters that the soldiers wrote home, the Nurses letters and
diaries tend to say very little about their nursing experience instead more often
writing of “the wonder at the mysteries of the middle east” and how the war
offered Nurses the opportunity to “see the beauties of the world we had read
about at school.”[14]
As Atia observed this romantic notion of the ‘nurse as tourist’ belies the
reality that Hannah and her fellow Nurses arrived in Egypt during the Gallipoli
or Dardanelles campaign (Feb 1915 to Jan 1916) when they would have been nursing
British, Australian, New Zealander and Canadian soldiers with severe wounds.
Figure 1.
Nurse Hannah Maughan (on far left) in Egypt c1915
On 11
December 1915 Hannah left Alexandria aboard the Hospital Ship Asturius arriving
in Salonika four days later.[15]
The HMHS Asturius was a large ship with room for 900 patients. The ship was
used extensively in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Dardanelles Campaign carrying
wounded back to the UK. It was destroyed in March 1917 when it was struck by a
torpedo from a German submarine after off-loading wounded personnel in
Avonmouth. The 35 crew members were all killed.[16]
Hannah spent all of 1916 as a Staff Nurse at the 28th General
Hospital, Salonika. Conditions in Salonika were reported to be difficult and “nurses
had little idea of the extreme conditions they would encounter. They lived in
small tents, water was in short supply, and the winters were harsh and very
cold, often with fierce winds blowing across the vast empty plains. In the
summer, the horrors and discomforts were much worse. At night all sorts of
unwelcome visitors would get into the tents – mice, lizards, scorpions, the
occasional snake – whilst the sweltering heat would make life very
uncomfortable”.[17]
Figure 2.
Nurse Hannah Maughan (centre back) in Salonika c1916
After
serving abroad in extremely trying conditions for 16 months Hannah must have
been very pleased to arrive home in England on 31 January 1917 for two weeks
leave. While on leave Hannah experienced her first bout of malarial fever. Malaria
was an unexpected adversary in WWI and Brabin found that “the military
were unprepared, and underestimated the nature, magnitude and dispersion of
this enemy” and that “the malaria epidemic in Greece resulted in ten allied
casualties for every one inflicted by the axis powers.”[18]
The Medical Board report of 6 April 1917 stated that Nurse Maughan “has been
confined to bed for a week with a temperature of 105⁰ on two occasions. She is
run-down & complains of giddiness & lassitude – shortness of breath.”
Six weeks later on 15 May 1917 the Medical Board found “she had another attack
one week ago, lasting 7 days – rigor every day – temp 105.6⁰F. She is
anaemic and not fit for any form of duty yet.” In 19 October 1917 Hannah was
passed fit for Home Service and she was posted to 1st Northern
General Hospital, Newcastle-on-Tyne where she was attached to the Special
Military Surgical Section.[19]
On 17
January 1920 Hannah Maughan was promoted from Staff Nurse to Sister. On Hannah’s demobilisation from the TFNS on 1
April 1920 the Matron in Chief of the TFNS stated that “Miss Maughan has very
good professional ability and is a capable Ward Manager. She is a reliable and
conscientious Nurse and possesses good temper. She is energetic and very
capable generally. Miss Maughan has rendered very good service for over five
years.” The Matron in Chief also advised that “Her Majesty, Queen Alexandra,
has graciously given permission for you to retain your TFNS badge (Figure 3),
as you have completed four years’ good service during the War.”[20]
Figure 3.
Hannah Maughan’s War Medals and TFNS Badge (on right)
Source: © Carol Summers (nee Maughan) Private Collection
Conclusion: Hannah was a committed professional Nurse and Charge Sister who worked until her retirement in 1945 on her 60th birthday.[21] A diminutive woman she was fiercely independent and lived in her own home well past her 100th birthday. Hannah died on 22 August 1993 aged 108 years at the Cottage Hospital, Alston, near the Maughan family farm at Kirkhaugh. Hannah was a remarkable woman who is cherished and loved by her extended family both in England and Australia. She is remembered for her wit, good humour and zest for life. She deserves to be remembered on the Kirkhaugh Roll of Honour alongside her brother Rowell and male cousins who served in World War 1.
Figure 4. Hannah Maughan’s 100 Birthday Celebrations
References:
[1] Birth certificate of Hannah Maughan,
born 24 April 1885, Entry No 90 in the Birth Register Book, No 41 for the said
Sub-district of Winlaton in the District of Gateshead.
[2] Ancestry Library Edition
[3] Meriam-Webster Online Dictionary,
‘Lying-In’, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lying-in,
accessed 20 August 2020
[4] ‘Century for a Former Nurse’ Cumberland News,
26 April 1985, news clipping held by Marian Maughan, Busselton, Western
Australia.
[5] ‘Here’s how the NHS in Harrogate looked over the last
70 years’, Harrogate Advertiser, 6 July 2018, n.p. www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/news/heres-how-nhs-harrogate-looked-over-last-70-years-851387
[6] The National Archives (TNA), Maughan Hannah,
1914-1920, WO Territorial Force Nursing Service 399/13232
[7] Scarlet Finders ‘The Territorial Force Nursing Service
1908-1921, An Outline’ www.scarletfinders.co.uk/92.html, accessed 20 August 2020
[8] ‘Territorial Force Nursing Service’, The Hospital,
18 December 1920, p269 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5257487/pdf/hosplond73048-0019a.pdf
[9] ‘Territorial Force Nursing Service’
p269
[10] The National Archives, WO 399/13232
[11] Roll of Honour, ‘HMHS Morea’, www.roll-of-honour.com/Ships/HMHSMorea.html accessed 20 August
2020
[12] Carol Summers to Catherine Maughan,
email, 15 August 2020, original held by the recipient
[13] Nadia Atia, ‘Big Ideas: The women’s war in the Middle
East – women’s First World War service in Egypt, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and
Palestine’, The National Archives Podcast, 10 July 2015 https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/big-ideas-womens-war-middle-east/
[14] Atia ‘Big Ideas: The women’s war’
[15] The National Archives, WO 399/13232
[16] Roll of
Honour ‘HMHS Asturius’, www.roll-of-honour.com/Ships/HMHSAsturias.html accessed
20 August 2020
[17] Malcolm Linfield ‘Battling
disease in Salonika: the story of Nurse Alice Emily Linfield’, Women Away from
the Western Front, https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/research/women-away-western-front/battling-disease-in-salonika/ accessed 20 August 2020
[18] Bernard Brabin, ‘Malaria’s contribution to World War
One – the unexpected adversary’, Malaria Journal, Vol 13, 2014, p497
doi:10.1186/1475-2875-13-497
[19] The National Archives, WO 399/13232
[20] The National Archives, WO 399/13232
[21] ‘Century for a Former Nurse’
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