Marie McNaughton Cameron

The second born child of Duncan and Flora Cameron, Marie was born in November 1877 on Mundowey Station, a large Merino sheep property, near Wagga Wagga in the Riverina district of New South Wales.

Shortly after her twenty-third birthday, she journeyed south to begin her three-year nursing training at the Ovens District Hospital, Beechworth, in North East Victoria.

A 90-bed hospital, its granite Palladian façade hid a number of detached wards including an isolation ward. In an earlier era, it was the only hospital between Melbourne and Goulburn. It was here that Marie would acquire the skills to nurse patients with communicable diseases such as typhoid and smallpox, to assist with surgical procedures and to treat fractures and contusions.

After qualifying as a general nurse in early 1903, she was appointed head nurse of the male division at Beechworth’s Hospital for the Insane; a monolithic institution situated at the top of Albert Road, on a hill known as ‘Asylum Hill’. The local newspaper, the Ovens and Murray Advertiser praised Marie’s appointment, writing ‘those who have benefitted by the ministrations of Nurse Marie Cameron, will certainly congratulate her upon her advancement to the position of head hospital nurse.’’

Home to over 800 tortured souls, the hospital was overcrowded. There was no proper sewerage, heating or cooling. The kitchen and laundry facilities were poor and the water supply sub-standard. The majority of the hard work needed to sustain the hospital, was done by the patients; they milked the cows, tended the cattle and pigs, and grew the fruit and vegetables as well as doing the laundry, making clothes and repairing shoes.

Marie’s hours of work were long and her duties arduous. Responsible for patient welfare and safety, she monitored the largely untrained attendants who cared for them, organised a weekly church service and arranged concerts which were performed in the hospital’s Bijou Theatre. She also inspected female patients on their admission, supervised the laundry and female workrooms and maintained the daily patient roll.

Required to live on site, she rarely escaped the asylum’s constant hubbub. And when she did, it was only after she obtained prior written permission from the medical superintendent, Dr Henry Samson. Marie endured these less than ideal conditions for more than three years before resigning to successfully undertake midwifery training at the Women’s Hospital in Melbourne.

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Public hospitals were established in New Zealand shortly after European settlement at Auckland and Wellington. Offering limited and risky health care, they were, if at all possible, to be avoided. Patient care was mostly undertaken by untrained male nurses who were often assisted by convalescing patients. Scant attention was paid to infection control or good sanitary practices.

A war on a far distant Crimean Peninsula, ultimately led to the significant transformation of nursing practices throughout the British Empire, due mainly to the insight, skill and intelligence of Florence Nightingale. Her nursing reform movement produced a new style of nurse who was efficient, obedient, clean, hardworking and sober.

Tuberculosis was a major killer of New Zealanders in the late 19th and early 20th century. Its cause was yet to be discovered and its epidemiology only vaguely understood. Sanatoriums were established and one of the first was the Te Waikato Sanatorium situated in the beautiful Maungakawa ranges near Cambridge on the North Island. It was here, in May 1909, that Marie Cameron took up her first engagement as a nursing sister in New Zealand.

In a world first, beginning in 1905, seven state-run maternity hospitals were established across New Zealand. Known as St Helen’s hospitals, they were staffed by qualified midwives and provided subsidised care for women unable to afford private hospital fees.

St Helen’s Christchurch opened in 1907 in a building that was formerly the dilapidated Sydenham hotel. The first matron, Scottish born Helen Clyde Inglis, refurbished the premises and created accommodation for sixteen patients and their babies. Her time as matron was tinged with controversy, when in 1908, two cases of septicaemia occurred; resulting in the death of one patient causing the hospital to be closed for a thorough cleaning.

In the autumn of 1910, Helen Inglis and Marie Cameron literally swapped positions. For Marie, it was a promotion, whereas for Helen, it was a ‘transfer’ imposed on her by the New Zealand health department.

Marie was elected to the governing committee of the New Zealand Trained Nurses’ Association (NZTNA), Canterbury branch in 1912. Two years later she became joint vice president. The branch developed a benevolent fund for assisting sick and disabled members of the association. This fund was to come into its own during the Great War and was eventually amalgamated with a much larger fund, the Nurses Memorial Fund.

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Towards the end of May 1915, Jessie Bicknell, deputy matron-in-chief of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service (NZANS) sent urgent wires to a select group of New Zealand nurses, asking them to volunteer for service abroad.

Matron Marie Cameron and seven other Christchurch nurses hurriedly packed their bags and made their way to the Kensington Nurses' Club in where they met with other nurses who had also answered the call. The club room was abuzz with the whirring of sewing machines being used to make the nurse's uniforms.

Once enlisted, the nurses were deemed members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and classed as officers. This, however, did not mean their uniforms were supplied and despite a request from their Matron-in-Chief, they were not given badges of rank.

The hospital when first opened, was intended to take convalescent cases only. However, not long after opening, the nursing staff were put under considerable pressure when 400 sick and wounded soldiers arrived from Gallipoli. They worked around the clock until ‘reinforced by some Canadian nurses.’

Over the next six months, the number of nursing staff increased to thirty-six and by the beginning of October over 5,000 patients had been treated.

Sister Isabel Clark, in a letter home dated 29 September 1915 remarked ‘… it was great ploughing in the sand at night. I had 21 tents with eight patients in each, but things have improved now. It is not nearly so hard.’

Keen for her nurses to experience some of what Egypt had to offer, Marie , when the workload would allow it, arranged duty rosters so that all nurses started at seven in the morning and then on an alternating basis, half would finish at lunch time and have the rest of the day off.

A letter published in the New Zealand Nursing Journal, The Kai Tiaki  in October 1915, gives an indication of the recreational activities enjoyed by 1NZSH staff:

‘… There is a lovely view of the sea from this hospital and the staff, also the convalescent patients, bathe here. The sisters have a nice bathing shed and generally run down in the evening for a dip.

… the great interest is the Canal, which is guarded by French war ships. All along the Canal one sees evidence of the fight there. There are the trenches and dugouts which can be seen from the Canal itself, and from the rail way line. … one is awakened at day break by the tramp of horses and wagons passing through the main street and looking down from one's balcony, one sees long lines of troops bringing their horses up from their morning dip in the sea.

Trips up the Nile are delightful. One was arranged during my stay, for the sisters and doctors of the N.Z. Hospital, and was an excursion not to be forgotten. It was a lovely day, hot, but under the awning quite bearable, and the scenery all along the banks of the river made one forget heat. The picturesque dahabeyahs [sic] with their lantern sails and pointed prows loaded with hay or melons were constantly passing us.

We halted for an hour or so at the landing for Memphis, … A flock of sheep came down for water and Arab shepherds and children came to see us and made a delightful picture with their bright blue, green and yellow garments. The women with all black draperies, but rows and rows of bright coloured iridescent bead necklaces. The return trip in the fast-fading Eastern sunset was lovely, cameras and one paintbox endeavouring to seize the quickly changing effects.’

The New Zealand nurses, like their Australian counterparts longed to be ‘moved on nearer to the front.’ Great excitement rippled through the camp when news came through that they were to leave Port Said on a special train for Alexandria.

Designed to be mobile, stationary hospitals were moved to wherever they were required. The British Eastern Mediterranean Command (BEMC) in late October 1915 instructed the 1NZSH to relocate from Egypt to Salonika on the troop transport ship, the Marquette.

‘I wonder what that is,’ remarked Captain Dave Isaacs looking down from the Marquette’s top deck at a straight thin green line swishing through the Aegean Sea towards him.

His companions, Sisters Mary Grigor and Jeanne Sinclair barely had time to respond before a German torpedo ripped into the ship’s forward starboard side.

It was just past nine o’clock on the morning of 23 October 1915.

Immediately after the explosion, the steamer began to list to the port side where Marie Cameron, Mary Grigor and sixteen other nurses waited for the lifeboats to be launched. Of this, Mary later wrote, ‘As usual the launching of the boats was a decided failure.’

In fact, the ropes of the lifeboat that Marie and Mary eventually clambered into could not be unhooked, causing the boat to drop astern broadside. When a second boat was lowered, its ropes broke causing it to fall on the boat Marie and Mary were sitting in. Several nurses were killed instantly whilst others including Marie were badly injured.

Adrift in the sea under grey skies, medical and nursing staff from the 1NZSH, officers, troops and animals of the British 29th Division Ammunition column, along with the Marquette’s crew all struggled to survive.

As the ship went down, trapped horses screamed and donkeys squealed while the machinery of war crashed and banged its way from one side of the ship to the other.

Many hours later, Marie’s life was most likely saved by the actions of two men: Staff Sergeant Alex Prentice who held a lifeboat flare aloft and an engineer who tied a red handkerchief to an oar to attract the attention of the French destroyer, Tirailleur.

At around three-thirty in the afternoon, Marie was pulled from a lifeboat onto a destroyer. She was desperately ill with pneumonia, a pierced lung caused by broken ribs, concussion, and hemiplegia.

How Marie sustained her head injury is not entirely clear. The most common previously published explanation is that she was struck on the head by the second lifeboat when its ropes broke. However, Acting Sergeant Leonard Wilson, an Australian, alleged that Marie was in the water when she was kicked by a mule.

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Why did the BEMC, despite receiving warnings that the Germans had every intention of sinking the Marquette and knowing that two troopships, the Royal Edward and the Southland had already been torpedoed in the Agean Sea, did they insist the 1NZSH, embark Alexandria on a troopship rather than a hospital ship? 

Their decision to do so was not only responsible for the forfeiture of 167 lives including ten nurses and twenty-two personnel from the New Zealand Medical Corps but also the vast array of equipment the 1NZSH had acquired. The one hundred European pattern tents, the x-ray plants and the dynamos for electric lighting which had made the 1NZSH a wonderfully equipped hospital, now all lay at the bottom of the Aegean Sea.

These losses were completely avoidable and the BEMC could rightly be accused of gross negligence.

The 1NZSH should have been on a hospital ship and not a troop ship. Hospital ships were identified with Red Cross markings which prevented them from being attacked by the enemy. Without the markings, the Marquette and everyone on board was a legitimate target. Furthermore, two troopships, the Royal Edward and the Southland were torpedoed in the Agean Sea in the weeks prior to the Marquette’s departure from Egypt.

According to the diary of Australian Army nurse Kath King, the HMHS Grantully Castle, a hospital ship, had left Alexandra late September 1915 and after arriving at Salonika on 13 October 1915 ‘had little work to occupy them’. The Grantully Castle was still at Salonika when the Marquette was torpedoed. Why was the Grantully Castle not sent back to Alexandria to pick up the 1NZSH?

The British had occupied Egypt since 1882, its aim being to secure the Suez Canal, a key transitory point of the route between Britain and its eastern empire. Egypt, however, remained part of the Ottoman Empire but when the Ottomans joined WW1 on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Britain declared Egypt a protectorate. This, along with the country becoming an enormous military base for the Allied forces, caused much resentment among the local population.

Was this resentment why the Marquette’s journey from Alexandria to Salonika was doomed from the very beginning?

Shortly after its early evening departure from Alexandria on 19 October, the steering failed. The ship returned to port where it was discovered that a cotton rag had been twisted around a piston rod on one of the engines.

Two hours later after departing again, a large case found on the deck with smoke coming from it was quickly hurled overboard. The case was a last-minute delivery by two men wearing Red Cross uniforms.

For the first four days of the voyage, the French escort destroyer, Tirailleur was part of the convoy accompanying the Marquette. After receiving instructions, it left the convoy on the evening prior to the Marquette being torpedoed. These instructions were later proven to be false.

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After the full magnitude of the Marquette disaster was revealed, the New Zealand press, even by today’s standards, went into a hyperbolic frenzy. One newspaper, the Evening Post alleged a survivor, an unnamed nurse, had stated:

The nurses behaved with grand courage, and refused to go to the boats until most of the soldiers had been saved. The nurses stayed on the decks cheering the Tommies until only a few of the men remained to help the women into the boats.

This outraged Lt-Col McGavin, the commanding officer of the 1NZSH who wrote to the New Zealand Minister of Defence claiming that the statement was inaccurate. His letter in part read:

The implication that the men neglected the nurses and permitted them to remain on the ship while endeavouring to save themselves is in direct opposition to the facts. Many men imperilled, and some possibly actually lost, their lives in gallant attempts to assist the nurses. …

The nurses did not refuse to go to the boats. Had they done so, they would have been placed in the boats by force. They did not cheer the “Tommies.” I myself saw that all the nurses were clear of the ship, …

McGavin’s defence of his men and his assertion that the contents of his letter would ‘meet with the approval of the remaining ‘twenty-five nurses’ displays a dismissive and cavalier attitude that WW1 nurses would sadly become all too familiar with.

As for the life and death struggle the Marquette nurses had experienced, Lt-Col FJS Cleeve, the 29th Division’s commander when speaking about the Marquette tragedy said ‘Many of these ladies appeared next day as if nothing unusual had occurred on the preceding one.’

This in stark contrast to Australian Army Nurse, May Tilton’s opinion, that ‘One only had to look at them to realise they had suffered a ghastly experience. The expression in their eyes haunted me for days.’

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Marie’s injuries were so severe, it was feared she would not recover. When taken on board, the Grantully Castle, she was unable to speak, walk or recognise any of her friends and clutched a teddy bear from which she refused to be parted. One of her nurses, Lottie Le Gallaise, described her as going grey overnight.

Along with the other surviving nurses, Marie left Salonica on the Grantully Castle bound for Alexandria on 29 October. Three days later she was admitted to the 19th British General Hospital, along with Susan Nicoll, Mabel Wright, and Jeanne Sinclair. At the end of December 1915, she was then transferred to the New Zealand General Hospital at Cairo.

The Kai Tiki Nursing Journal in January 1916 under the heading ‘News of Invalided Nurses’ informed its readers that Marie was ‘still very ill’ and ‘unable to speak’ but the ‘paralysis was somewhat lessening. As soon as she is sufficiently strong, she is to return to New Zealand. In the meantime, her sister, [Annie] who is attached to the Australian nursing service, has been with her ever since the return of the nurses to Alexandria.’

Prior to enlisting in 1915, Annie Cameron was a theatre sister at Launceston General Hospital. Several weeks after Marie sailed from Egypt for New Zealand in early March 1916, Annie was sent to France where she spent the rest of the war using her considerable surgical skills in assisting surgeons in casualty clearing stations. In the English summer of 1919, she was mentioned in despatches by Sir Douglas Haig for ‘conspicuous services’.

After being invalided home to Christchurch, Marie was a ‘guest’ at Jeannie Beck’s and Fanny Welsman’s Rawhiti Private Hospital where she was ‘near her devoted friend’ Harriet Newman who had taken over as Matron of St. Helen’s when Marie joined the New Zealand Army Service.

The 1916 Birthday Honours were appointments by King George V to reward and highlight good works by citizens of the British Empire. There was great excitement at Rawhiti when Marie’s name appeared in the birthday honours list. She had been awarded the Royal Red Cross (1st Class) and was also mentioned in despatches. She was one of only five Australian women who were awarded a Royal Red Cross in 1916.

The honour was awarded to military nurses who demonstrated exceptional devotion or competency in performance of nursing duties whilst attached to a military hospital or who had performed some exceptional act of bravery or devotion to duty.

As Marie’s recovery was painfully slow, she was still in New Zealand when her father, Duncan Cameron, died at Gore Hill, Sydney, aged eighty-two in September 1916.

On the afternoon of Friday, 30 November, 1917 Marie was the guest of honour at a farewell held in the nurses’ sitting room at Christchurch Hospital. Whilst she was much better than when she arrived home, she was still unable to walk.

The nurses, many of whom trained under her at St. Helen’s presented Marie with a beautiful expanding bracelet featuring ‘her monogram in the centre’ and on the back the inscription ‘From the N.Z. Nurses’. It was hoped that the gift might serve as a link between Marie and her many friends who wished her ‘a speedy return to good health and her former useful life’.

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Australian Labor Prime Minister, Billy Hughes in late 1915 rashly assured the British Government that Australia, would provide roughly 7,000 new recruits a month, an annual total of 84,000 from a male population of around 2.5 million. Hughes, as a result of rapidly falling enlistment numbers, then, after a failed attempt to have conscription enacted into law, called for a referendum on conscription for military service overseas.

Both the yes and the no campaigns set in motion a public debate which split the country along class and religious lines. The working class felt they were contributing more to the war effort than the wealthier classes. Catholics, most of whom were Irish, were anti-British particularly because of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin in 1916. Soldiers on the front line voted three to one against conscription with the no campaign ultimately prevailing by a small margin.

Despite 1917 heralding high unemployment with prices outstripping wages and huge strikes across the country, Hughes in November of that year, told the Australian public that once again they would be asked to vote on the matter of conscription.

Marie accompanied by her older sister, Barbara Cameron, on 23 December 1917 arrived home in Sydney to a divided nation which three days earlier had roundly voted ‘no’ to the second referendum.

In 1919, Anzac Day in New South Wales was disrupted by the high rate of infection and number of deaths from Spanish influenza. The government banned all public meetings and postponed the Anzac commemoration until 22 May.

Unfortunately, the day itself was a disaster. The march was called off due to rain, causing thousands of people lining the route to vainly seek admission to the Sydney Town Hall where the commemorations were held.

Spontaneous cheering erupted when ‘four soldiers came in, carefully carrying a lady in the uniform of the Army Nursing Service-a lady with a strong, quiet, serene face, on whose tunic was pinned that coveted medal, the Royal Red Cross. She was Matron Cameron, … There was silence for a moment after the matron appeared and then the "Diggers," like one man, sprang up and cheered and cheered. The smile with which the stricken lady greeted the men in khaki told of that bond of mutual devotion between Australian soldiers and Australian nurses, forged in the sufferings of war, …’.

As late as 1920, Kai Tiki was still publishing snippets of Marie’s life at Randwick. In the July issue, a letter written by one of Marie’s fellow patients was published detailing aspects relating to the Prince of Wales’ visit to Sydney, in June 1920:

The day he arrived we sick sisters and Matron Cameron went out in a car to see the procession. We had a splendid view of it all, and the Prince caught sight of the New Zealand uniform, and bowed and smiled at matron. She was so pleased. On Sunday he came out to Randwick, and we looked on from the balcony and had a very good view of him planting the palm and re-naming the hospital.

It was arranged that Miss Cameron should go to Government House to meet the Prince, so she went and took him a bunch of carnations for his birthday. He took one out of the bunch and wore it, and appears in to-day's paper with the carnation in his buttonhole. So, matron is delighted.

Sometime in 1924, Dr. Norman Dawson Royle, a leading orthopaedic surgeon, operated on Marie in the hope that the procedure would restore her paralysed arm to full use. Unfortunately, this did not eventuate.

When the Sick Sister’s Quarters at the Randwick Military Hospital closed in 1926, Marie was transferred to a private hospital at Lindfield on Sydney’s upper north shore where she lived until her death in November 1948.

The sheer stupidity and arrogance of the British Eastern Mediterranean Command in October 1915, condemned a caring, compassionate, highly skilled, much-loved Matron and woman, to live thirty-three years of her life with an all encompassing disability.

Abridged Research Notes 

Time Line

Sources  

© Anne Hanson, 2020                                                                                                                                                     E-mail:  Anne Hanson