I have long had an interest in the role of women in WW1 - on the home front as workers, volunteers, wives, mothers and sisters keeping homes going and looking after wounded and damaged men. One role that was hugely signficant was that of nurses and other medical staff. I have discovered a book that gives very short biographies of nurses who were awarded the Military Medal. The book was published in 1919. So I decided to look into their future lives. What became of them? Did they stay in the profession or marry and have a family?
Louisa Mary Gilbert
Louisa Mary Gilbert was born in 1889 in Deptford and trained at Gravesend Hospital in Kent for 4 years and qualified
in 1914. She joined the Queen Anne Imperial Nursing Service in 1915 and served for 4 years. I was really
interested to note that she trained in
anaesthetics: I found a letter where she signed herself "Sister Anaesthetist" and also a certificate confirming this. According to the Royal College of Physicians, in an emergency, an experienced nurse would sometimes carry out a minor
surgical operation. From the second half of the war, nurses were trained
as anaesthetists, only to have this role removed from them after the
Armistice. https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/blog/wartime-nursing-women-frontlines
In her service record (held at the National Archives) she is often described as exceptional, kind, conscientious and an excellent nurse.Louisa served in France where she contracted dysentry and was sent home to England to recurperate for several months. Louisa was awarded the MM in September 1917.
Eligibility for the MM was extended, by a Royal Warrant dated 21 June
1916, to women whether British subjects or foreign, with the first
awards gazetted on 1 September 1916.
Louisa married in 1920 in London and I have discovered her husband Joseph Christopher Cox was in the RAMC and was in the same CCS at the same time that Louisa was there, . He lived in the NE while Louisa came from London. Might this be a wartime romance?!!
Although Louisa married in 1920, and had a child in 1922, she is registered with the Royal College of nursing, in her maiden name, up until 1923. The role of "Sister Anaesthetist" was discontinued after the War. It seems such a waste of training and experience; it must have been quite difficult to relinquish. After all, the nurses were not "taking a man's job" .. they would have surely been very much in demand.
After 1923 I can find no more information about Louisa except that she died in 1976.Intriguingly I found Louisa’s husband in the 1939 register, living with his father in law and sister in law Florence.He is not with Louisa whom I can’t find. They had a son who died aged 11 in 1939. Florence also qualified as a nurse (in 1917) and served abroad. She married in 1925 but also goes under her maiden name several years after marrying. All very puzzling!
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