29 replies to this topic

[Jim Strawbridge]

A nurse in the TFNS, Elizabeth Fraser (Frazer?) MacDonald died in Glasgow Stobhill Hospital on 10 Oct 1918, presumably of Spanish flu. She is commemorated on the Kingussie, Invernessshire War Memorial, her home town. She is not commemorated in the CWGC site. Why not?

Presumabely this is Elizabeth McDonald (sic) who is also commemorated on the Scottish Military Nursing Services memorial, St. Giles High Kirk, Edinburgh and also on panel 2 of the York Minster panels. Like you, I cannot find her name as having a grave cared for by the CWGC. But remember that not all families wanted their loved ones to be the responsibility of anyone else and preferred to make their own funeral arrangements and grave maintenance. This may be for religious reasons or preferring there to be no military attachment to their loved ones death. Or simply that the family accepted full responsibility for their loved ones remains.

[Jim Strawbridge]

My interest is that I am preparing a Register of all WW1 serving female casualties for eventual publication at my own expense. I have been gathering biographical information on these women and photographs of them or their graves. If you find her grave in Kingussie I would value a photograph of it.

[Terry Denham]

Like you, I cannot find her name as having a grave cared for by the CWGC. But remember that not all families wanted their loved ones to be the responsibility of anyone else and preferred to make their own funeral arrangements and grave maintenance. This may be for religious reasons or preferring there to be no military attachment to their loved ones death. Or simply that the family accepted full responsibility for their loved ones remains.

Jim

This can be true in respect of the actual grave if the person died in the UK. However, their name would still appear in the CWGC list. A private grave has no bearing on War Grave status.

She may not be in the list as she had left service by the time of her death.

[welshdoc]

Hi all are we again in one of those situations where the poor lady had already left the TFNS and then died of a non related war disease or whatever. This I think would preclude a CWGC comemoration wouldn't it Terry?

[Terry Denham]

Yes it would.

Alternativerly, her death after discharge (if such be the case) could have been due to illness contracted due to her war service but the authorities were never so informed. It which case she would be a genuine 'missing' name.

[Marion Lewis]

If it's of any help, it is quite cheap to get all the death cert information via the Scotland's People website. The information is available to you immediately as everything is digitised, and it works out at about £1.20 per item, although you have to spend a minimum of £6 and therefore need to have other things that you need to know ready at the same time (or within a week). Scottish death certs have far more info than English ones - such as names of parents (where known) and even the exact time of death - so they can be worth getting.

[Terry Denham]

A good tip, Marion. Can you post the website address, please.

In this case, though, we do not know if she died in Scotland.

[Marion Lewis]

Glasgow's Stobhill Hospital was mentioned as the place of death at the start of the topic, Terry, so it should an appropriate place to go.

To access the website, just type 'Scotland's People' into the search engine and it takes you to the Scottish Records Office own site - births up to 1905, marriages up to 1930 and deaths up to 1955 (all from 1855) can be found this way, as well as Census material from 1861 to 1901, with 1851 and 1841 soon to come on-line. Warning, though - it can get addictive!

[Terry Denham]

Marion

Sorry, I forgot that item in the first post.

[Jim Strawbridge]

Elizabeth is buried in a family grave in Kingussie and described as being a member of TFNS and of having died in a military hospital.

Therefore she was still under the militery so why can I not find her on the CWG site?

Things written on grave headstones are not always factual. As Terry has previously said, she may have been discharged and I am guessing that she could still be nursed by her friends at the military hospital where she previously worked.

[Terry Denham]

Jim. You said it for me.

There is still no evidence that she was serving at death. Headstone inscriptions are unreliable.

You need her service record if it still exists.

She may well have been serving and be a genuine missing name but it has to be proven from official sources.

[Sue Light]

John [if you're still there]

I came across this photo and it reminded me of the thread.  The caption to it says:

Elizabeth McDonald
Territorial Force Nursing Service
Who died of pneumonia on duty on 10/10/18

Although I realise that this caption is no more proof than anything else, the interesting thing is that she's not a trained nurse, but in the uniform of a Special Military Probationer.  This makes it highly likely that she was a VAD prior to her SMP status, and may, therefore, have records held by the British Red Cross with their VAD personnel records.

VAD Personnel records

Sue

[Jim Strawbridge]

Remarks: Daughter of Donald McDonald, farmer and Catherine McDonald nee Fraser. Believed to be Elizabeth Frazer MacDonald who died in Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow at 7.20 pm on the 10th October 1918 of acute lobar pneumonia. Her death was registered by her sister J. McDonald of Broomfield, Newtonmore, Inverness-shire who was present at the death. Elizabeth is commemorated on the Newtonmore War Memorial. Also on the Scottish Military Nursing Services memorial, St.Giles High Kirk, Edinburgh as assistant nurse, Territorial Force Nursing Service. She is believed to be buried in a family plot in Kingussie Cemetery. Not recorded with the CWGC. YMP2

These are my notes on the lady so far. Perhaps the memorial has it right and that the uniform is of her as an assistant nurse. Anyone near Kingussie willing to find the grave headstone?

[Sue Light]

All the evidence adds up to this woman deserving commemoration by the CWGC, but I doubt that she'll ever achieve it.  Whatever her nursing status, the fact that she was part of the Territorial Force Nursing Service and died at Stobhill can mean nothing other than that she died on duty.

Before the War Stobhill was Glasgow's Poor Law Infirmary, and from August 1914 the patients were moved out to make way for 2 Territorial General Hospitals - 3rd and 4th Scottish General.  The only patients that remained at that time were 120 adult Poor Law patients who were too ill to be moved, and 500 children cared for in a separate wing - as even these decreased, Stobhill became a 'soldiers' hospital.'

If Elizabeth McDonald had already been discharged from the Service, then she would never have been admitted to a Military Hospital, even if she had still been living in the local area, and there were no facilities there for ordinary civilian patients. I suppose it's possible to construct a scenario in which she is discharged, decides to go back to Glasgow, is walking past the door of the hospital, collapses etc., etc., but that's no more than fanciful.  I feel certain that she was doing her job at the hospital, and was taken ill, dying either in the nurses' home or sick nurses' quarters.

There is no service record for her at The National Archives - there is one for a nurse with a similar name, but it isn't hers.  And as there is no room for 'balance of probablility' at the CWGC, unless one can be unearthed at the BRCS Archives, then she will remain uncommemorated.  As the years go by, and more records are lost or destroyed, unearthing the facts will become even more difficult.  Perhaps the time will come when evidence will be considered on it's merits, and the demands for 'proof' relaxed.  

Sue

[Terry Denham]

Discretion does not come into this case.

If she was in TFNS and died within the qualifying dates, she qualifies - other probationary nurses of the TFNS do.

The date of death is easy to prove (death certificate) and this may even indicate her military status. If it does, that should be all that is required for MoD (not CWGC) to accept her case.

I agree that if it does not show her status, then some form of military or other official record will be needed - not so easy.

[Sue Light]

Reading through this thread again, the main points of the discussion originally seemed to revolve around whether she died in service, or if she had been discharged prior to her death.  But now the doubt seems to lie in whether she was actually part of the Territorial Force Nursing Service at all.  If she was a nurse, and working at Stobhill, then she must have been employed under the auspices of the War Office, either as a member of the TFNS, QAIMNS or as a military VAD, so the 'proof' would now seem to lie with whether she was a nurse at all.

The details from her death certificate outlined above don't seem to include her job description, so as it stands at present, however compelling the evidence,  there is nothing there that would satisfy MOD.   I did email 'johndick' who started the thread, but there has been no response, so posssibly it will move no further on.

Sue

[kenny.bell]

Sue Light, on 01 May 2006 - 06:57 PM, said:

Reading through this thread again, the main points of the discussion originally seemed to revolve around whether she died in service, or if she had been discharged prior to her death.  But now the doubt seems to lie in whether she was actually part of the Territorial Force Nursing Service at all.  If she was a nurse, and working at Stobhill, then she must have been employed under the auspices of the War Office, either as a member of the TFNS, QAIMNS or as a military VAD, so the 'proof' would now seem to lie with whether she was a nurse at all.

The details from her death certificate outlined above don't seem to include her job description, so as it stands at present, however compelling the evidence,  there is nothing there that would satisfy MOD.   I did email 'johndick' who started the thread, but there has been no response, so posssibly it will move no further on.

Sue

All

I visited Kingussie yesterday, trying to help Jim along with his project.

For what it's worth, please see the attached photograph.

Regards

Kenny

Attached Images

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[Pete Starling]

She does not appear in the TFNS section of the military nurses book of remembrance.

Pete Starling

[daisy7]

Elizabeth Fraser Macdonald was my great-aunt. I am confident that she was in the TFNS and died in service.The extract of the death register  does describe her as "Hospital Nurse".The local Newtonmore and Kingussie newspaper, The Badenoch Record" of Oct/Nov 1918 which I have seen, carried info and copies of letters sent to her mother by Captain H.J.B. Rice, American Red Cross and Colonel S.H. Wadhams of GHQ, American Expeditionary Forces, France. A memorial service led by Colonel Adamson was held for her at Stobhill Hospital on 13.10 1918 and was attanded by "a large gathering of patients,nurses and officers". Col. Adamson stated that "she had done her duty nobly to the end ---" and " it could be truly said she died for her God, her king and country" The article of 16.11.1918 also states that "the authorities at Stobhill Hospital where she was serving,desired a military funeral but the officer at Inverness was unable to arrange for this."

I, too, have so far been unable to find official records of her, but hope this helps to dispel doubts that she was a TFNS nurse and that she did indeed die in service. The cause of death was indeed "Spanish flu"

[Jim Strawbridge]

I have her as serving with the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service this taken from the York Minster panels where casualty females are commemorated. This is different to the Territorial Force Nursing Service. Yet on the St. Giles High Kirk memorial to Scottish nurses she is shown as TFNS. Some confusion somewhere.

[daisy7]

Jim Strawbridge, on 05 February 2012 - 06:01 PM, said:

I have her as serving with the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service this taken from the York Minster panels where casualty females are commemorated. This is different to the Territorial Force Nursing Service. Yet on the St. Giles High Kirk memorial to Scottish nurses she is shown as TFNS. Some confusion somewhere.

I think this must be a different person on the York Minster panels. I have not seen them myself, so don't know what is inscribed there. I am confident that that is  my aunt on the St. Giles memorial as the newspaper cuttings I referred to described her as an Assistant Nurse, TFNS. It was also stated in the paper that she had completed her probationary period. A transcript of the St.Giles memorial also appeared in "The British Journal of Nursing" of 12 November,1918 along with some details of the unveiling. Apparently, of the 40 nurses commemorated, 33 died of "diseases arising from military service" . Furthermore, it states that "only 2 were members of the regular Military Nursing Service and the others were members of theQAIMNS Reserve and the TFNS who had been called up from civil employment"

I have just sent in a request to the NHS archive at Glasgow University for any info they might have and really hope they can come up with something useful.