Stories From a Nurses Photograph Album: Tracing the Lives of the women behind the photographs

As a historian of British women in WW1, I was delighted to come across a wonderful photograph album belonging to Mary Muscat, a nurse in Malta. The whole album has been digitised and available to browse online. There is also a very detailed biography of Mary (link below). It is well worth a read,She nursed in two hospitals in Malta during the War. I have added another link, to a website that gives a huge amount of detail about the hospitals.

Mary's life had been well researched and we know a lot about her.  However, many of the photographs have named nurses below them; these women are unknown to us.  I decided to find out more about their lives before and after the war. What became of them? Did they continue nursing? Marry? Survive the War? I was intrigued and decided to investigate!

Here is my first nurse! 

 Dorothy Keziah Balderston

 

 Dorothy: Pictured standing, 2nd left

 

Dorothy was born in Lincoln in 1896. Her father Thomas was a farmer and "horse owner". Dorothy joined the British Red Cross on 7th October 1915. She spent a year nursing in Lincoln, gaining two scarlet efficiency stripes before embarking to Malta in November 1916. She stayed in Malta until May 1918, when she returned to England and continued nursing with the Red Cross at the 2nd Eastern Military Hospital in Brighton, leaving in March 1919. 

 

 

 

 

 

When I researched Dorothy's life after she left nursing, I discovered that she left the UK for Canada on 23rd May 1921 arriving on 29th May. .To my surprise, I found a marriage in Winnipeg just 3 days later on the 1st June! Her husband, John Louis Sutcliffe had been born in Yorkshire but before the Great War, he had emigrated to Canada, where he worked as a clerk. He enlisted in the Canadian army on his birthday on 29th August 1914. I do not know how the couple's paths crossed. John was a patient in a military hospital at Shorncliffe where Canadian Army Medical Corps were based but I cannot find a link to any of the hospitals that Dorothy worked in.

 

Dorothy and John had a son and a daughter; the son was in the Canadian air force in WW2 and their daughter, like her mother, became a nurse. Dorothy died in 1936; she had returned briefly to the UK in 1933 - perhaps she was already seriously ill. John remarried in 1938 but the happiness of that marriage was short lived. John had what seems to have been a remarkable military promotion. A private in WW1, he went to France with the Royal Canadian Dragoons and after seven months service was commissioned in the Imperial Arms. He was in command of British rearguard at Baku Russia, with only a small handful of men who were almost out of ammunition but he successfully protected the main body's withdrawal.

 

He became a government official after WW1.  He volunteered for active service in WW2 on Sept. 5, 1939.By this time he was a Lt Col. He was captured at the fall of Hong Kong and is thought to have died of disease in February 1942.He was 44. 

 

By the age of 19 Dorothy had left a comfortable life in Lincolnshire for the harsh life of a VAD nurse in Malta.. She remained in nursing for 4 years, 2 of them in Malta. Tragically Dorothy died at the age of 40, having returned to England one more time a few years before she died. Her husband, a soldier in WW1 and WW2 also died at in his 40s in a POW camp.

 

Within 2 years of leaving the Red Cross, Dorothy had met and married a soldier and left England for good; moving to a country she had never even visited! Her life story surely shows how much the War changed many women's perspectives, aspirations and experiences in life. 

 

Photo of Dorothy

Copyright descendants of Carlo Maria Muscat , who was the Agius brothers and Mary’s grandfather.

These photos may be downloaded for private use but not used commercially.

 

  http://agiusww1.com/mary-muscat-2/

 

https://hkvca.ca/cforcedata/indivreport/indivdetailed.php?regtno=X83#gsc.tab=0

 

https://www.maltaramc.com/articles/contents/reghosp.html 

  

 

 

Dr Jessie Lamb - A Forgotten Pioneering Doctor

 I have been researching the incredible, but little known, family of the Reverend Benjamin Lamb.After researching two of his daughters who were nursing missionaries, I then discovered that he also had another daughter who became a missionary doctor with a life dedicated to helping the poor women of the East End and then the women of India at the beginning of the 20h C.

 

Jessie was born in 1877. In 1901 she was a medical student at the London School of Medicine for Women. The school was formed in 1874 by an association of pioneering women physicians Sophia Jex-Blake, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Blackwell and Elizabeth Blackwell

 

 

 The New Hospital for Women, London.’ 

 Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

 

In 1881, there were 25 women doctors in Britain; by 1911, there were 495. Jessie was one of them.

 

 

 

Jessie graduated from the hospital in 1903 and by 1905 she was the Assistant Chief Medical Officer at the Bermondsey Medical Mission in East London. The Bermondsey Medical Mission was established in 1904 by Dr Selina Fox in what was at that time one of the poorest districts in London. 

 

The masonry plaque for the Hospital was laid in October 1904 

and still remains on the front of the building

 

Jessie remained at the hospital until 1906 when she travelled to Amritsar in India. She was to remain based at the missionary hospital there for 25 years, returning home only to give lectures and fund raise in England. There are dozens of newspaper reports detailing her work both in India and on her trips home.

 

 

  

The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS) also known as the Church of England Zenana Mission, was a British Anglican missionary society established to spread Christianity in India via women. Women in India at this time were segregated under the purdah system, being confined to a women's quarters known as a zenana into which it was forbidden for unrelated men to enter. The zenana missions were made up of female missionaries who could visit Indian women in their own homes with the aim of providing them with medical help and education.

 

Advertisement for the Zenana Missionary society

 

 

Jessie helped establish a hospital for women in Amritsar where in one year alone, 18,000 outpatients were treated with 800 operations performed annually.  She was also responsible for training 100s of medical missionary staff who travelled to India to carry out their missionary work. She bravely  helped tend the wounded following the Amritsar massacre on 13 April 1919.In 1920  Jessie was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for Public Service in India.. It was a medal awarded by the Emperor/Empress of India between 1900 and 1947, to "any person without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex ... who shall have distinguished himself (or herself) by important and useful service in the advancement of the public interest in India. A more deserved recipient would be hard to find!

 

 

 

Jessie returned to the UK some time after 1920. She died on 1st May 1931 in Bath, where her family were living, following a serious operation. The number of people at her funeral are surely testament to the respect in which she was held.

 

 Obituary 1931

 

While researching this truly remarkable, selfless and important doctor, I discovered a Wikipedia entry about the London School of Medicine that she attended. There was a long list of "notable alumni" . Jessie's name is not on it. Nor did she receive any official recognition for her tireless and important work. And yet surely as much, and often even more than, any other woman on that list, Dr Jessie Lamb's  life perfectly encapsulates Elizabeth Anderson's words.

 

Every woman who undertakes the study of medicine  

gains at once this solid advantage 

She puts aside frivolity and accepts for herself 

a serious aim in life.  

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

 

. 

I wonder how many more "Dr Jessie Lamb's" there are waiting to be discovered and rewarded a place in history that will doubtless be so well deserved. Thank you for  your service Dr Lamb.
 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_School_of_Medicine_for_Women 

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/about/search-faces-ucl/exposing-loophole-elizabeth-garrett-anderson-britains-first-female-doctor

https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/bermondsey.html 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaisar-i-Hind_Medal 

The Lamb Family. Two Trailblazing Missionary Nurses

Following on from my previous blog introducing the incredible Lamb family (parents Canon Benjamin and Louisa Lamb) , I now turn to the three missionary sisters - Florence, Jessie and Maud. After studying and obtaining qualification in the medical profession, these remarkable women left their comfortable family home in Yorkshire to dedicate their lives in the service of others in India and South China.

 

FLORENCE'S STORY

 

Florence, whose memorial piqued my interest in the family, was born in 1874 in Thirsk. Her brass memorial is in St James Church Clapham, Yorkshire where her father had been the Vicar for  many years.  It is a "facsimile" of the headstone of her grave in Fuzhou, South China. 

 

 

I was intrigued to see  the inscription stating that she was "A CEZMS missionary and trained nurse, at the hospital in Atlo Nguong, South China"..... On researching her sisters, I discovered that they too carried out missionary work for this organisation. Time to find out more!

 

The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS) also known as the Church of England Zenana Mission, was a British Anglican missionary society established to spread Christianity in India via women. It would later expand its Christian missionary work into Japan and Qing Dynasty China.There is a lot of information about the society online and I have posted links below.  Women in India at this time were segregated under the purdah system, being confined to a women's quarters known as a zenana into which it was forbidden for unrelated men to enter. The zenana missions were made up of female missionaries who could visit Indian women in their own homes with the aim of providing them with medical help and education. The first mission station was established outside the provincial capital of Fuzhou in 1884.

 

 

I have been  unable to ascertain exactly when Florence made the long and surely arduous, trip to China. I do know that she qualified to be a member of the Incorporated Society of Physiotherapists and Masseuses at Guys Hospital in London in 1900. Sadly, Florence died  such a long way from home in China in 1903. According to a newspaper report, she had been a missionary for 18 months so it is likely she headed overseas not long after qualifying.

 

 

 Royal College of Nursing Obituary

 

 

 The notice of Florence's death in 1903

 

 

 

Photograph by John Thomson dated 1871

Wellcome Collection: Public Domain 

 

 

 MAUD'S STORY

 

While Florence had served as a missionary in China her sisters Maud and Jessie travelled to India where they both remained for many years.

 

Maud was born in 1882 in Wheldrake, Yorkshire. According to the Nursing Register, she trained from 1906-1909  in Brighton, where she qualified. In 1911 she is living with her parents at the Clapham Vicarage, Yorkshire. Her occupation is listed as "trained nurse: Hospital". It is touching that her entry in  the 1939 register also states that she is a "trained nurse SR" as does her sister Florence's memorial. I suspect that around this time, nursing was becoming a more regulated and perhaps more appreciated, profession and the sisters and her parents were very proud of their profession.

 

 

Fundraising Advert for the Missionary Society

 

I do not know when Maud travelled to India but I cannot find her on the 1921 Census and I suspect she had been in India for some time after qualifying in 1909. I know from various newspaper reports that she nursed at the St Catherine's Hospital in Amritsar together with her sister. Indeed, the nursing register shows that she is still working there in 1931. 

 

 

 

 

 

(Photo supplied by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society.)

STAFF AND PATIENTS OF ST. CATHERINE'S HOSPITAL, AMRITSAR.

 

I know that she returned several times to the UK as I have found her representing various aspects of the nursing profession on several nursing committees, including those who worked overseas. She was a very active member of the profession both as a nurse but also has an administrator and lecturer.

  

 

RCN report on Nurses' Missionary meeting

Magazine of the CEZMS

I haven't included a lot of information about the Zenana Missionary Society here: there is an awful lot of information available online! For further information, see links below - although a quick Google (other search engines are available!!) will bring up many more links!

At some time between 1931 and 1939 Maud returned to England and to the South Coast where the remaining members of her family are living. She died in 1966 and is buried in Bath Abbey Cemetery, where four of her siblings and her parents are also buried. Her headstone states that she served overseas for 25 years.

 

Maud's headstone

Florence's interesting memorial has started me on quite a family story, of which Florence and Maud are just a part. They must have been wonderfully intrepid and driven: not content with being "just" missionaries spreading the Christian religion - they clearly wanted to help in a practical and indeed possibly life saving way and Maud in particular must have had a big impact over the 25 years she served. 

My next blog will be about an even more intrepid sister - Jessie who, not content with qualifying as a doctor in the early years of the 20th century, decided to take her skills to the distant land of India.  

 Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/222982502/maud-lamb: accessed July 4, 2026), memorial page for Maud Lamb (1882–27 Jun 1966), Find a Grave Memorial ID 222982502, citing Bath Abbey Cemetery, Widcombe, Bath and North East Somerset Unitary Authority, Somerset, England; Maintained by woowoo (contributor 49949980).

 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43738/43738-h/43738-h.htm

https://missiology.org.uk/blog/zenana-missions-work-fuh-kien-province-china/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0961202920010204 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_England_Zenana_Missionary_Society 

British Newspaper Archive

Ancestry.co.uk

https://rcnarchive.rcn.org.uk/volumes/31/Volume%2031%20Page%20354

https://rcnarchive.rcn.org.uk/volumes/70/Volume%2070%20Page%20263