the Endell Street Hospital under Dr. Garrett Anderson; she is therefore
the first woman doctor to work under the War Office in England. Dr.
Stoney not only undertakes the photographic branch of the X-ray work,
but she diagnoses and reports on the cases from the photographs.
Another branch of her work is to use X-rays actually during operations
for those surgeons who prefer to operate in this way. She also started
a small department for X-ray treatment, which has proved beneficial in
certain nerve and goitre cases.
Dr. Stoney recently reported that considerably over 5000 cases had
passed through her hands since she came to this hospital. She has a
staff of V.A.D. assistants, two of whom she has trained in the work
sufficiently to enable them to take over X-ray installations. One is
now working in Rumania, and the other in London. Dr. Stoney’s splendid
work has completely overcome any prejudice which may have attached to
her as a woman when she first took up her post. Although she is the
only woman doctor in the hospital, she works on an equal footing with
the men, except that she holds no military rank.
Miss Edith Stoney is a woman of great university distinction, having
been wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. She was an
Associate of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Lecturer in Physics to
the London University. Astronomy is another subject on which she has
lectured, and while at Newnham College she had charge of the telescope.
She has also done valuable original work in relation to searchlights.
At the beginning of the war Miss Stoney joined the committee of the
Women’s Imperial Service League, and helped in the organisation of the
hospital unit with which her sister went to Antwerp, fitting up the
portable X-ray apparatus, which was subsequently of such great service.
After the transfer of the hospital to Cherbourg she continued to assist
in the organisation of its supplies. Her real war work, however, may
be said to have begun when she retired from her work as Lecturer in
Physics in the spring of 1915 and joined the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.
Miss Stoney first took up work at the tent hospital at Troyes, where
she put up and ran the X-ray department, giving invaluable assistance
to the surgeons by the accurate localisation of foreign bodies in
wounds. The head surgeon, Dr. Louise M’Ilroy, stated that she never
failed to find a projectile searched for. This was indeed a tribute to
the accurate localisation in the X-ray department. Another valuable
branch of Miss Stoney’s work was the taking of stereoscopic skiagrams.
Miss Stoney took one of the very early skiagrams of gas bubbles in the
tissues, due to gas gangrene, a development which has since come into
great prominence.
In the autumn of 1915 Miss Stoney accompanied the hospital unit from
Troyes when it was ordered to Serbia by the French authorities. Before
leaving for Serbia she had the foresight to equip herself in Paris with
a portable engine, as she was determined that her department should
be efficient. On the committee refusing to sanction the expense, she
bought it herself. Miss Stoney’s action was soon justified, for when
the hospital was installed at Gevgheli in Serbia there was no electric
supply. Thanks to her engine, not only was this the only British
hospital able to work X-rays, but incidentally, as a by-product of
the X-ray department, Miss Stoney lighted the entire hospital with
electricity. The need of much electric light in the dark winter days
meant hard work for Miss Stoney, and the following extract from a
letter conjures up a picture of work in no easy conditions:
“The electric light was needed in the pharmacy until the doctors had
finished, and it was often late before I could stop the little engine
and pack it up warm for the night.... When I creaked up the ladders in
stockinged feet to the loft where fifty-four of us slept, there could
be no thought of washing, with ice already in the jug; it was often an
inch and a half thick by morning. Instead of undressing, one piled on
every scrap of extra clothes one had, and put one’s waterproof under
the mattress to stop the draught up through it.”
When the French retreated from Gevgheli, a site was found for the
hospital just outside Salonika, on a bit of ill-drained, marshy ground.
There again the engine proved invaluable. From January, 1916, onwards
Miss Stoney has run the X-ray department, doing, besides her own work,
many radiograms for British and French doctors from other hospitals,
who referred their cases to her for examination.
At Salonika Miss Stoney again lit the hospital with electric light. For
several months she was obliged to attend to the engine entirely alone,
owing to the illness of the only mechanic. She further set up treatment
by high frequency for the patients, and radiant heat baths with
vibratory massage. Having previously studied the Zander treatment, Miss
Stoney was able to instal an apparatus, which, though she describes
it as rough, was very successful in treating stiff joints requiring
movement. She also used ionisation for healing wounds with beneficial
results.
In all these ways Miss Stoney has been able to bring her knowledge
of physics to the service of the wounded. She has been a pioneer in
her work in this physical department which she has originated and
developed at Salonika. “It is easy to work X-rays,” she writes, “when
someone else has installed them; but in a moving hospital, in difficult
circumstances, physics is a help in getting the apparatus up and
working well. We put in order the X-ray outfits of two British hospital
ships calling at Salonika. The doctors and mechanics on board had not
just the needed physics, but could work the apparatus perfectly well
when it was installed.”
The Serbian Government has decorated Miss Stoney with the Order of
St. Sava in recognition of her services. But the reward of her fine
work lies in the gratitude of the scores of her patients who owe their
renewed health largely to her indomitable energy, and the wonderful
ingenuity and resource with which in conditions of abnormal difficulty
she has brought so many projects to a successful and practical issue.
Writing of her work lately, Miss Stoney says: “There is always sadness,
but there is endless variety and interest in the life, and one trusts
that the great privilege of easing a drop in the vast ocean of pain, so
bravely borne, may have been ours.”
[Illustration:
BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM
_Chandler_
_To face page 59_]
XI
THE BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM
Of all the splendid stories of the war there is none that catches
the imagination more than that of the work of Baroness de T’Serclaes
(Mrs. Knocker, as she was in the early days of the war) and Miss Mairi
Chisholm. It is an unparalleled achievement that these two young women
should have been living actually up in the firing line ever since the
beginning of the war, tending and caring for the Belgian soldiers,
dressing and nursing the wounded, and helping the men in the trenches
by taking food and hot drinks to them day by day even at the very
outposts.
Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm (who was then only eighteen) first went
to Belgium in September, 1914, as members of Dr. Munro’s Ambulance
Corps, and started ambulance work in Ghent and Furnes. From the first
their skill and courage were put to the highest test, and it would be
hard to imagine greater bravery and devotion than they showed, for
instance, in the fierce fighting at Dixmude in October, 1914. Mrs.
Knocker, who is an expert motor-driver, drove an ambulance car to and
fro on the road between Dixmude and Furnes under such heavy shell
fire that men broke down and were unable to continue driving under
the strain of the terrible ordeal. On one occasion the ambulance was
required to take some German prisoners as passengers, and, with no
other guard but Miss Chisholm, Mrs. Knocker drove her convoy along the
shell-torn road. “I think it was the proudest moment of my life,” she
wrote in her diary.
But the work for which their names will live began in November, 1914,
when the two severed their connection with the Ambulance Corps and
started to work together in a little cellar in the ruined village of
Pervyse. Mrs. Knocker was led to take this step by her conviction,
shared by the Belgian doctors, of the necessity of establishing an
advanced dressing-post where the severely wounded men might have time
to recover from shock before enduring the jolting journey to hospital,
which had already proved fatal to many.
Thus it was that these women--the eldest little more than a girl--took
up their work. Through all these long months up to the present day
they have been living the lives of the soldiers themselves--their
quarters for the most part a tiny cellar, again and again under shell
fire, sometimes suffering fierce bombardments, not taking off their
clothes literally for weeks on end, eating anything they could get,
and enduring the trials of cold, dirt, exhaustion, and danger with
a gaiety and a courage which have been at once an inspiration and a
source of astonishment to those who have been privileged to see them
at Pervyse. When the cellar was demolished they moved to another
tumble-down cottage, only to be shelled out twice more. But wherever
they established themselves it became “home” to the soldiers--their
presence bringing a ray of comfort and brightness into the stern
routine of life in the trenches. When in March, 1915, a decree was
passed by the commanders of the Allied armies in Paris forbidding the
presence of any women in the firing line, at the request of the Belgian
authorities an exception was made for these two, mentioned by name, who
were then officially attached to the Third Division of the Belgian army
in the field.
No honour in the war has been better earned than the decoration which
King Albert bestowed on each of them, when he appointed them Chevaliers
of the Order of Leopold. As if to crown their wonderful story, romance
came to one of them in the midst of that shot-torn village. The young
widow, Mrs. Knocker, recently became the wife of a Belgian officer,
Baron Harold de T’Serclaes.
XII
LADY MARY HAMILTON, MISS STELLA DRUMMOND, AND THE SKILLED WOMEN
MUNITION WORKERS
It is admitted on all sides that the output of munitions achieved
by Great Britain since the spring of 1915 has been little less than
miraculous, and this result is all the more astonishing when it is
recalled that at least 25 per cent. of the men who were engaged in
the chemical and engineering trades at the outbreak of hostilities
have joined the Army. It was thus essential not only to fill the
gaps, but also to augment the supply of available labour, in answer
to the increased demand. The women of the Empire at once responded
to the appeal for their help. A new and unsuspected reservoir of
labour was thus discovered, without which, in the words of Mr. F. G.
Kellaway, M.P. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Munitions),
“the Germans would by now have won the war.” The extent of the help
rendered by women may perhaps be best realised by the fact that
there are over 700,000 women engaged in munition work, employed on
processes which cover practically the whole engineering and chemical
trades. Under the general term “munition work” are included varied
forms of work, both skilled and unskilled, undertaken by women,
from the heavy manual labour of loading and unloading trucks of
ammunition, to the most intricate and delicate of engineering and
electrical operations. To mention only a few of these highly skilled
operations, women are building a great part of one of the best
high-speed engines in the country, each woman setting her own tools,
work which requires considerable technical skill. In the construction
of chassis for heavy army lorries and in marine-engine building women
are undertaking more and more responsible work. In the delicate work
of constructing aero-engines they are turning on centre lathes to a
half of a thousandth of an inch. Women are boring and rifling the
barrel of the service rifle: they undertake the hydraulic riveting of
boilers: they work the electric overhead travelling cranes for moving
the enormous boilers of our men-of-war: they are employed extensively
on turbine work. “So wide is the scope of women’s capabilities,” Mr.
Kellaway stated recently, “that a prominent engineer has expressed
his conviction that, given two more years of war, he would undertake
to build a battleship from keel to aerial in all its complex detail,
entirely by women’s labour.” And again: “To watch young girls hard at
work for twelve hours a day, working on shells, lubricating bullets,
handling cordite, making, inspecting, and gauging fuses, examining
work where the thousandth part of an inch is a vital matter running
their machines deftly and easily, and spending their days in the danger
buildings among explosives with as little fuss as if they were knitting
socks, brings a realisation of that which lies behind the list of
operations on which women are engaged to-day.”
Women’s skill on complicated processes has been acquired with a
rapidity which has caused astonishment to experts. Before the war an
apprenticeship of five or six years was considered necessary amongst
Trades Unions for gaining mastery of some of the processes which
women have learnt in a few months or even weeks. In measuring their
achievement, however, it must never be forgotten what a debt is owed to
British organised labour, which surrendered up in the hour of national
crisis many of the legal rights and privileges established only after
years of effort and controversy.
The women munition workers of to-day have come from all ranks of
society, from every corner of the Empire, many of them entirely
unaccustomed to industrial life or manual work, and many unacquainted
even with life in England. An incident in one munitions works may
be recalled as typical of the rest. Working side by side recently
on the machines in a certain factory were a soldier’s wife from
a city tenement, a vigorous daughter of the Empire from a lonely
Rhodesian farm, a graduate from Girton, and a scion of one of the old
aristocratic families of England. War has indeed proved a powerful
solvent of social barriers, and one of the distinctive features of
factory life in munition areas is the excellent leadership of the
educated women who have entered the works. Typical of this class of
munition workers are Lady Mary Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of
Abercorn, and Miss Stella Drummond, daughter of General Drummond. These
two friends, girls in years but soldiers in spirit, determined in the
early stages of the war to serve their country by making munitions.
Accordingly they applied for work as ordinary “hands” in a munition
factory, and for some six months were employed on repetition work in a
shell factory. Lady Mary Hamilton has stated that she and Miss Drummond
mastered the processes on which they were engaged in a few weeks, but
admitted that a victory over the prejudices of the factory employees,
inclined to resent the introduction of “swells,” was a lengthier task.
Soon the skill of the two friends attracted the attention of those in
authority, and they were selected for training in more advanced work.
They were admitted into the factory school for skilled work, and after
five weeks of this training they proceeded to the Government school
at Brixton, London. There they followed a nine weeks’ course in such
advanced work as tool-making and tool-setting--tasks which would not
have been considered possible for women workers in pre-war days.
After successfully completing their training, Lady Mary Hamilton and
Miss Drummond were allocated to a factory, where they were eventually
placed in charge of eight machines each--Wells Turret Capstan lathes.
They were then entirely responsible for the output of their machines,
which involved responsibility for the workers employed on them. In this
“shop” both boys and girls were employed, and the new charge-hands
or tool-setters had to “make good” with the mixed staff. They were
entirely successful, not only in the setting of the five or six
requisite tools in each machine and in the making and grinding of their
own tools, but in producing an output which was accurate to within a
200th part of a millimetre. So popular were they as leaders of their
staff, that when Lady Mary Hamilton recently resigned her post before
her marriage, and Miss Drummond’s services were transferred to welfare
supervision under the Ministry of Munitions, the regret expressed by
the employees showed that they were losing comrades as well as officers.
There are also countless instances of uneducated women who have found
themselves equal to technical work of considerable responsibility.
For example, in one factory a woman driver works a 900-h.p. Willans
plant. She starts the engine herself if required, watches the voltmeter
and regulates the governor accordingly, wipes the commutators and
regulates the brushes. This woman was formerly a kitchen-maid, and had
no technical experience whatever. Another working woman recently lost
the first finger and thumb of her left hand, owing to a loaded gaigne
jamming in the press. After an absence of six weeks she returned to
work, and is to-day back on the same work and getting an even greater
output than before. Public recognition is due to the great army of
women munition workers for their courage and endurance, both in the
way in which they are facing the dangers incidental to some of their
occupations and the monotony entailed in the regular performance of
others.
[Illustration:
LADY PERROTT
_Swaine_
_To face page 67_]
XIII
MRS. FURSE, G.B.E., R.R.C., LADY PERROTT, R.R.C., AND THE VOLUNTARY AID
DETACHMENT
Throughout the war the services of the Joint Societies of the British
Red Cross and the Order of St. John have covered a vast area of work
for the sick and wounded.
One of the most vital branches of the work has been that of the great
army of untrained or part-trained women, who have been supplementing
the limited number of trained nurses in the hospitals at home and
abroad. Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director General of the Army Medical
Service, has explained the scope of their work when describing the
organisation of the Territorial Army nursing system. He says: “It
was necessary to arrange for the dilution of the nursing services by
women who had received some special training, though of elementary
character, to afford assistance to the more highly trained nurses. This
had been foreseen, for at the time of the formation of the Territorial
Army, the training of the civil population to this extent was taken in
hand, and voluntary detachments of women in possession of elementary
certificates, but receiving continuous training, were formed in the
country. Thus at the outbreak of war there were some 60,000 women in
England who had received this training.”
For a long period of years the St. John Ambulance Association, under
the ancient order of St. John of Jerusalem, had already controlled a
large organisation of ambulance and nursing divisions, and may claim
to have originated the teaching of first aid, which has now become the
basis of all Voluntary Aid Detachment training. When the scheme was
started, detachments were formed throughout the country, in answer
to Queen Alexandra’s appeal, by the British Red Cross Society, the
great new organisation inaugurated by King Edward VII. in July, 1905,
and also by the Order of St. John. Many of the old-established St.
John Nursing Divisions enrolled at once as Voluntary Aid Detachments,
their composition being similar. Shortly after the outbreak of war,
the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John decided to
amalgamate their organisation and finances for the period of the war.
The administration of the Voluntary Aid Detachments throughout the
country is largely local. Each county has its own system under the
central offices in London, and the work of the women, from the county
presidents to the humblest workers, has been one of the proudest
records of the war. Some Voluntary Aid Detachments have been mobilised
in their entirety for service in the auxiliary military hospitals, many
of which have been almost entirely staffed and financed by individual
detachments. Others are posting their members separately for hospital
work elsewhere.
The work of the V.A.D. members besides nursing, includes cooking,
storekeeping, and secretarial work, which are classed under the
heading of General Service. This is the branch of work for which Mrs.
Charles W. Furse, as Commandant-in-Chief of the V.A.Ds. of the Joint
Societies, is now responsible. The posting of the V.A.D. nurses to
hospitals at home and abroad also goes through her hands. Widow of the
well-known painter, and daughter of John Addington Symonds, Mrs. Furse
was for several years before the war one of the most interested and
prominent of V.A.D. workers. When Sir Alfred Keogh’s scheme for the
organisation of voluntary Red Cross workers came into being in 1909,
Mrs. Furse was one of the first women to enrol. In 1912 she became
Commandant of the first Paddington Detachment, London 128. During
the next two years she encouraged enterprise among the members by
organising classes in cooking, laundry, and hygiene, in addition to the
study of first aid and home nursing. By this time Mrs. Furse had become
a member of several committees dealing with Red Cross and V.A.D. work,
and was already recognised as an authority on these subjects. On the
outbreak of war her services were at once commandeered by the British
Red Cross Society.
For the first months of war Mrs. Furse undertook the management of the
Enquiry Department at Devonshire House, which became the headquarters
of the V.A.D. In September, 1914, she submitted a scheme to the War
Office for V.A.D. rest stations on the lines of communication. In
October she was ordered to go to France with sufficient members from
her own detachment to start this work, which has been much extended,
and has met a great need.
In January, 1915, Mrs. Furse was recalled from France, where the
rest-station work was now established, to form a department for the
co-ordination of V.A.D. work, and to organise a continual supply of
probationers for the military and other hospitals. A selection board
was formed at Devonshire House to deal with all applications of V.A.Ds.
for service at home or abroad. Mrs. Furse’s duties also involve
periodical inspections in France, where the work has been splendidly
carried on by Miss Rachel Crowdy, the Principal Commandant in France.
After one of her recent tours of inspection, Mrs. Furse reported: “The
work of the V.A.D. members in France is a credit to the women of the
Empire. Wherever I went I found the same anxiety to keep up the very
high standard of work and behaviour set by the organisation.... No job
is too small for the V.A.D. members, and they good-humouredly fill
any gap which appears. The rules and regulations are very strict, and
there is but little entertainment. The work is under war conditions,
and the members try to show that they can wait till the end of the war
for their play-time. Undoubtedly the V.A.D. organisation is proving
that women can be trusted in the zone of the armies, and that they have
realised the meaning of discipline and appreciate the necessity of
discretion.”
Many girls who went to France early in the war as practically untrained
workers now hold splendid records of service in hospital, and have
risen to positions of considerable responsibility. In measuring the
scope of what they have accomplished, it must not be forgotten that
V.A.D. members are drawn from very varied social positions, a large
proportion being women accustomed to lives of luxury and ease, to
whom the hard and often unattractive work has been a new and difficult
experience.