大象传媒

When war broke out in 1914, up to 4,000 nurses were mobilised who had some preparation for war. But other than that, trained female nurses and untrained women flocked to join the surge for the war effort. In Stoke-on-Trent, the War Office took over the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary and turned it into a convalescent hospital for recovering soldiers staffed by Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses (also known as VADs).

Nursing was a hard life, with the women working very long hours (in some cases 60 hour weeks). They were giving basic nursing care to men and facing a range of battle wounds they were not used to seeing before. One woman told 大象传媒 Radio Stoke in the 1970s that she served at the infirmary during the war and they had 鈥渕en with their legs off, arms which had been cut all round鈥�some with fingers off鈥�.

Anne Allen from Eccleshall, a nurse during World War One, is the first name on the Eccleshall War Memorial 鈥� women鈥檚 names on war memorials are relatively rare. She was the elder daughter of the vicar and was 43 when she volunteered in 1915 to become a VAD and went to Sandon Hall 鈥� but died of laryngitis in 1919.

Location: North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary Hospital, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 7LN
Image: The interior of a hut at the North Staffordshire Infirmary during WW1
Photograph courtesy of the North Staffordshire Medical Institute