I felt nervous when I saw Jess's writing ... I generally do feel anxious when I get letters from home and cannot read them quick enough as I am always afraid of getting bad news of mother.

Diary entry - May Cameron

Hôpital Anglais Militaire, Nevers, France

4 February 1916

Written by one of May’s sisters, Jess Cameron, the letter did indeed contain heartbreaking news; their beloved younger brother, Max, had died suddenly at the age of forty-five. This awful news had taken more than two months to reach May at the Hôpital Anglais Militaire in Nevers; a small medieval town situated on the Loire River about 160 miles south east of Paris.

May, on that fateful afternoon, was working her final shift and as a way of saying good-bye to the soldiers in her ward, she had organised a special afternoon tea. There were 'cakes of various kinds, cigarettes, and cigars ..., fruit, chocolate and tea'. The letter arrived just has she had everything ready but such was its affect that she left the ward after arranging for other staff to take over.

The hospital was located in the middle of a railway repair yard. Railway lines ran almost up to its doors which made the unloading of wounded soldiers from hospital trains more efficient. The more serious casualties were laid on the ground side by side on stretchers. Medical staff moved amongst them, triaging as they went, based on what colour label was tied to each soldier’s uniform. Red for the severely injured, blue for the less severe and white, for the rarely seen, slightly injured.

Originally a 110-bed hospital which later increased to 170, it was well fitted out with pleasant sunny wards, bathrooms, a heating system and an X-ray room next to the operating theatre. The staff were mainly British but many of the orderlies and the women who came in to mend clothes and look after the linen, were French.

May and her colleagues worked extremely hard particularly after major battles when it was not uncommon for them to be on their feet for thirty-six hours or more. Treatment of wounds without the yet to be discovered, Penicillin, was difficult. Apart from administering pain relief in the form of morphine, little could be done for abdominal wounds. Much time and effort went into keeping mirrors away from soldiers, whose faces had been horribly disfigured by their wounds.

Nevers, with its narrow winding streets, framed by stunning ecclesiastical architecture and feudal edifices was in stark contrast to Glenshee, the Cameron family’s sheep property, near Elmhurst, in the Pyrenees region of Western Victoria.

§

Gold-rush immigrants flooded into Victoria in 1852. May’s Scottish born parents, Georgina and John Cameron, were amongst them. They like thousands of others, spent some years on the central goldfields searching for the lucky strike that never came. By the time May was born in 1868, John was working as a boundary rider on one of the local stations before he selected land at Nowhere Creek in Western Victoria.

Given that the average life expectancy for a woman in the early 20th century was around fifty-one years, it seems strange that May, aged thirty-five, chose in March 1903 to commence a three-year general nursing training course. What was it about her life circumstances that led to such an unusual choice at such a late stage in her life?

Nevertheless, May embarked on her nursing career at Beechworth’s Oven District Hospital where she ‘proved to be a nurse of rare ability’ and ‘by her kindness and consideration won the regard of the patients and all with whom she came in contact.’

After gaining her general nursing certificate in August 1906, May spent two years at Melbourne’s Queens Memorial Hospital for Infectious Diseases, later known as Fairfield. The hospital began its life as a fever hospital and treated patients with diseases such as typhoid, diphtheria, cholera and smallpox. May was familiar with the symptoms of typhoid in particular, as the Ovens District Hospital, like many hospitals on the goldfields had wards known as fever or typhoid wards.

On attaining her certificate of competency, she ‘occupied the position of staff nurse, sister and acting matron’ and was highly praised for ‘her management of the diphtheria ward during an epidemic.’

In the early winter of 1908, May, due to staff shortages, returned to the Ovens District Hospital as a staff nurse and when required, took on the role of Acting Matron. This held her in good stead for her appointment in July, 1909 as Matron of the Stawell Hospital and Benevolent Asylum. At the time, the hospital was one of only two major hospitals between Adelaide and Melbourne. Benevolent Asylums were built, in the mid to late 19th century, to house the destitute including homeless women, their children and orphans.

Keen as ever to add to her nursing knowledge, May in the latter half of 1913 studied and worked at the Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in East Melbourne under Dr. Fitzgerald, a senior resident surgeon who spoke highly of her.

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Between the outbreak of the war and the end of September 1914, Britain sustained a staggering number of troop casualties. Consequently, by October 1914, more than thirty British base hospitals and casualty clearing stations were established in France and Belgium. They were staffed by the Royal Army Medical Corps and nurses from both the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service (QAIMNS) and the Territorial Force Nursing Service (TFNS).

May arrived in France with the TFNS in early October 1914 and was with them until, August 1915, when she joined the nursing staff of the Nevers Hôpital Anglais Militaire.

§

Only days after receiving Jess’s letter, a devastated May returned to London. Waiting for her were lots of letters but not the ones she wanted. ‘I do not know how or why he’d died, all the letters I received from friends were just the usual ones of condolence. God the misery of it …’ London’s weather which she described as ‘simply awful, mud and snow and rain day after day’ only added to her anguish.

Under the circumstances May, after having already devoted fifteen months of her life to France’s sick and wounded, could have ‘turned tail’ and sailed home to her family. Instead, in May 1916, aged forty-eight, she accepted an appointment as a staff nurse with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR).

If she was hoping to return to France, she would have been disappointed when she was classified as ‘fit for home service’ and assigned to the Eastbourne Military Hospital on the south east coast of England.

When May, first applied for a QAIMNSR position in July 1915, she reduced her age by almost ten years stating she was born in 1879 rather than 1868. Perhaps, this was the reason, she was not seen as being suitable for overseas service.

Formerly the infirmary of the Eastbourne Workhouse, also known as St Mary’s, the hospital had twelve beds for officers and 312 beds for other ranks, large numbers of whom were brought Eastbourne by train and then by ambulance to St. Mary’s. By mid 1915, St Mary’s was a major military hospital whose patients because of the blue uniforms they wore, were known as the ‘blue boys’.

Mumps, a highly contagious viral infection, was prolific amongst not only sick and injured soldiers but also the nurses who cared for them. Unfortunately for May, she contracted mumps in June 1917.

Several weeks later she appeared in front of a medical board who granted her sick leave which she spent at Glenalmond, an Australian Convalescent Hospital at St Albans, Hertfordshire. However, the board also decided that because May had a marked astigmatism in one eye, she was not physically fit for foreign service. This decision may have been the catalyst that caused her to seek and be granted permission to resign her appointment as a staff nurse from the QAIMNSR on the grounds that she needed to return to Australia due to her mother’s ill health. In the meantime, she continued working at St Mary’s whilst waiting for her passage home to be arranged.

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After four years overseas, May arrived home in Melbourne on Sunday 18 November 1917 where she caught up with family and friends before travelling home to Glenshee in December 1917. Of her homecoming, the local newspaper, the Avoca Mail, said:

Sister M. Cameron, daughter of Mrs. Cameron of ' Glenshee,' Elmhurst, who joined the nursing staff at the front at the outbreak of the war, and has been nursing at the front in France for 3 years has returned to Elmhurst. She, has experienced strenuous times and is now about to enjoy a well-earned rest. It is her intention to return to help succour the wounded, as soon as she has fully, recovered her strength. Sister Cameron was met at Maryborough on Wednesday evening by Mr and Mrs. A.F. Paten and motored to Elmhurst.

Whoever was responsible for the snippet’s contents was mistaken in believing May had spent three years at the front in France. Documentary evidence  shows that she was in France from October 1914 until February 1916 and was then in England until September 1917.

If May did recover her strength, it was only temporary because in April 1920 she was diagnosed with a cerebral tumour. In August the same year, her sister, Barbara Canning, wrote to the Matron in Chief of the QAIMNSR. In her letter, Barbara explained that May was 'unable to remember any date or length of service with the Reserve' and requested the Matron to provide evidence of May's service with the QAIMNSR which would assist May 'to obtain the War Bonus.'

The war bonus was an Australian government scheme whereby medical practitioners and nurses who had left Australia prior to 11th November, 1918 were to receive 1/6 per day. In May’s case, this would have amounted to a substantial sum.

The Matron in Chief forwarded a certificate of service to Barbara in early September 1920, but it’s mostly the likely necessary paperwork was not completed before May, aged fifty-two, died at a Melbourne private hospital on 12 December 1920. Three days later she was buried in the Cameron family grave at Elmhurst.

Selections from May Cameron's Autograph Book

Time Line

Sources 

All about war gratuity: instructions how to get it, together with a gratuity ready reckoner; Australian handbook for nurses, sailors, soldiers and dependants, compiled by F.J. Brewer, (1920). Publisher: Shovelton & Storey. Available online State Library of Victoria.

Births, Deaths & Marriages Victoria:

Birth certificate, May Margaret Jane Cameron, 417/1868

Death certificate, May Margaret Jane Cameron, 16499/1920.

Entries from the diary of May Cameron, dated 4 February & 19 February 1916.

Long Long Trail UK 

Lost Hospitals of London 

May Cameron's Autograph Book.

Minutes of the Ovens District Hospital House Committee - 9 February 1903 to 7 December 1908.

Newspapers:

The Avoca Mail, 7 December 1917,  page 2.

The Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 4 September 1909,  page 2.

Princesses on the Wards: Royal Women in Nursing through Wars and Revolutions by Coryne Hall, published September 2014.

Service Record - May Cameron, QAIMNSR, UK Archives WO/399/1278

United Kingdom Service Medal & Award Rolls, 1914-1920 - Ancestry Australia

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