14 Australian Family Tree Connections November 2013

Sister Penelope Fa Boer War and WWI nurse remembered

© Christine Frater

Penelope FRateR was born 26 January 1869, the daughter of Alexander and Penelope (Hay) FRateR at Merrylong Park on the Liverpool Plains, in the New England area of NSW. She was 31 and single when she enlisted on 19 January 1900 in the NSW Nursing Sisters’ Reserve to serve in South Africa. As a fully qualified and experienced nurse she was given the honorary rank of Lieutenant.

Penelope’s parents’ lives were a great early settlers’ tale. They arrived from Scotland as assisted migrants in June 1851. Her father Alexander worked as a shepherd in the farming areas on the outskirts of Sydney until 1869, then took up ‘Merrylong’ (where Penelope was born) until 1911, finally settling on his own property ‘Millfield’ as a grazier at Deep Creek near Narrabri. FRateR family history shows that he was keen on horse racing in and around the New England area and particularly the Narrabri races. It is pure speculation that as part of his successful farming he may have supplied some of the estimated 25,000 horses to leave Australia for South Africa during the Boer War. The FRateRs had ten children, seven boys, three girls. Penelope was the eighth, and the second daughter. Their youngest child, Fergus Stewart, also served in the Boer War as No 26, Trooper, NSW Citizens Bushmen.

Training to be a nurse was not available in Narrabri. Leaving the family home Penelope travelled to Sydney late in 1891 and, staying with one of her brothers who ran the Sans Souci Hotel, she was accepted as a Probationer at the Sydney Hospital in November. Here the two-year nurse training program was along the lines developed by Florence NiGhtiNGaLe and brought to Australia by her protégé, Lady Superintendent Lucy OsBURN, some 30 years earlier, after the success of the NiGhtiNGaLe approach to military nursing in the Crimean War. Student nurses’ records of progress were carefully maintained for both the theoretical, e.g. ‘Anatomy and Physiology passed at viva voce’ and practical, e.g. ‘On day duty in ABC Female Surgical Ward. Proved good, conscientious, and painstaking’. Later in her training Penelope’s duties had her working in both the men’s medical and surgical wards.

The NSW Nursing Sisters’ Reserve, raised in 1898, was the first female army unit in any Australian colony, and was commanded by Lady Superintendent (Matron) Ellen (Nellie) GOULD who had been in charge of Penelope’s nurse training at Sydney Hospital. Immediately before her own enlistment Nellie GOULD was the Matron of Rydalmere Hospital for the Insane and, as one wag later put it, ‘quite suitable preparation for nursing in South Africa’. In all probability most of the recruits that Nellie accepted had trained under her at Sydney Hospital.

Their uniforms were modelled on the English ones: grey with chocolate facing (faced and braided for lady superintendents, chocolate cuffs for matrons and cuffs with two chocolate stripes for nursing sisters) and red cape, cap with veil. Each nurse was provided with a uniform to the value of £4.

A site on Anzac Parade, Canberra has been dedicated for a Boer War memorialmonument to be erected to honour our Boer War servicemen and nurses

Nurses were required to provide, at their own expense, a chatelaine a type of wallet (toolkit) which was worn around the waist. These could cost up to £6 (a large outlay for nurses at that time) and contained instruments such as forceps, probes, scissors, spatulas, thermometer, syringes

Sister Penelope FRATER

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Sister Penelope FRateR

and catheters. Penelope still had her chatelaine in the 1930s and used some of its contents.

The nurses left Sydney as part of the second NSW contingent to go to the Boer War, only two months after the first. All 14 nurses were officially included in the 108 strong NSW Army Medical Corps Team commanded by Lt Col  R V KeLLy, sailing from Sydney on the SS Moravian on 17 January 1900. 405 officers and men of the NSW Mounted Rifles/1st NSW Mounted Rifles also sailed on 17  January 1900 on the Southern Cross, following the 175 gunners of A Battery, Royal Australian Artillery who had left on 30 December 1899 on the Warrigal.

As the nurses were preparing to board ship in Sydney the British Army was having a string of serious military reversals in South Africa. The press quickly dubbed the period 10-15 December 1899 as ‘Black Week’ to describe the outright defeats at the battles at Colenso, Stormberg and Magesfontein while at the same time Boer forces had besieged British troops inside the towns of Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley. Despite these losses, the British War Office announced that colonial nurses going to South Africa would not be treating Regular Army soldiers (meaning those from Great Britain), reserving this duty to British-trained Army nurses. Colonial nurses would also not be attached to marching columns in the field ambulance role, nor would they be posted to field hospitals just behind the lines.

The British commanders on the ground took little notice of these instructions. Penelope FRateR’s group was to be dispersed to various British hospitals, nursing all who were sent, including captured Boers. When Nellie GOULD led her 13 nurses down the SS Moravian’s gangplank at the Cape Town docks in early February 1900 her orders from the British Army Medical Service were to despatch six

L–R: Superintendent Julie BLIGH JOHNSTON, Sister Penelope FRATER, Lady Superintendent Nellie GOULD

nurses just a short distance south to the British General Hospital at Wynberg, and four to the No 2 Stationary Hospital 800kms on the other side of the Cape on the coast at East London. Nellie GOULD, her deputy Julia BLiGh JOhNstON, Penelope FRateR and one other were posted to a temporary Stationary Hospital at Sterkstroom, a small inland town on the eastern side of South Africa, about 250km north west of East London, to serve with the NSW Army Medical Corps. So much for the British War Office’s instructions!

As the tide of the war turned in March 1900 with the capture of Bloomfontein, NSW nurses were sent to the No 3 British General Hospital at Kroonstad and No 2 at Johannesburg. In August four nurses were posted to No 17 Stationary Hospital in the eastern Transvaal at Middelburg and No 6 General at Johannesburg. They were transferred again in September 1901 to No 25 Stationary at Johannesburg where they stayed until February 1902

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Sister Penelope FRateR

when they were posted even further forward to No 31 Stationary at Ermelo, a bare hillside at the end of the line of British forts in the Transvaal. The surgical wards were filled with the wounded and victims of accidents, mostly from working with horses and wagons. The larger medical wards were overflowing with patients suffering from typhoid (enteric fever) and related probelsm of dysentery. Yellow jaundice and sunburn were perennial, and in 1901 nurses also had to treat an enormous number of both soldiers and civilians who had caught measles that raged through the population.

Other nurses were needed in various repatriation hospitals and were also sent on trains and ships accompanying the sick and wounded.

One of the 14 NSW nurses, Sister A D M (Bessie) POcOcK, was Mentioned in Dispatches.

Although peace was declared on 31 May 1902 Penelope and her fellow nurses did not return until August. All nurses who served the full war were awarded both the Queen’s (Victoria) South Africa Medal and the King’s (Edward VII) South Africa Medal.

Back in Sydney, Lady Superintendent Nellie GOULD and her friend, Superintendent Julia BLiGh JOhNstON, opened a private hospital at Newtown, Sydney, calling it ‘Ermelo’ after their last front line posting in South Africa. It is probable that Penelope FRateR joined them in that venture. Nellie GOULD was appointed from 1 January 1901 – Federation – to run the Commonwealth Australian Army Nursing Service Reserve in New South Wales and was appointed principal matron of the 2nd Military District. Penelope FRateR’s record shows that she

continued as ‘efficient’ in the peace time Army unit. After ‘Ermelo’ was sold in 1912, both Nellie GOULD and Julia BLiGh JOhNstON joined the Public Health Department.

When WWI broke out Sister FRateR, giving her address care of her sister and her mother at Oatley in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire, enlisted on 27 September 1914 to join the Army Nursing Service of the Australian Imperial Expeditionary Force to serve overseas.

Penelope sailed on the Braemar Castle from Alexandria to Marseilles to be part of the British Expeditionary Force, and she and her colleagues were soon setting up and working their own unit hospital. They were overwhelmed by the number of wounded and found themselves working day and night in extremely crowded conditions.

They were trying to accommodate three or four times as many patients as the unit was designed to handle. Penelope nursed with many units in the area and on hospital ships evacuating wounded from Gallipoli. From there she was posted to England where she and her friends enjoyed two weeks leave before being posted to Lemnos.

The casualties were very high there and many hospitals lacked basic essentials. The nurses were housed in tents and the food was responsible for some of the illnesses contracted by the hospital staff, including malaria, which was to affect them for the rest of their lives.

Close up showing open and closed chatelaines

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Sister Penelope FRateR Sister Penelope FRateR

In January 1915 she was posted to No 3 Army General Hospital near Cairo and Penelope was appointed Head Sister. In May that year she went with the unit to France where they were once again housed in tents and the nursing was very heavy, as they acted as a casualty clearing station. In March 1918 she returned to Australia on a hospital ship nursing the wounded and continued to nurse them at St George’s Heights Military Hospital. In 1919 she was posted to India, where she nursed the wounded at Bangladore before returning to Australia at the end of the year. It was from this hospital that she received her discharge.

As many of the wounded were in hospital for weeks or even months at a time, Sister FRateR gave her patients autograph books to write, draw or paint in as a means to occupational therapy. Some of the artwork in these books was truly amazing.

After her discharge she worked tirelessly for her fellow ex-service personnel, some of whom were suffering from service related illnessess and financial problems. She was fortunate to be able to buy herself a house in Cronulla which was her base in assisting her fellow service personnel with their problems.

In an unfortunate event, her home was destroyed in a bushfire, taking with it memorabilia from her travels, her war medals and decorations.

In appreciation of the work Sister Penelope FRateR did to help her fellow service men and women, the Cronulla RSL banded together and rebuilt her house. Unfortunately, two weeks after moving into her new home, she was admitted to hospital and died on 12  December 1939, aged 70, only a few months after World War II began. Penelope FRateR was cremated and there is a headstone

commemorating her war service in the Woronora Cemetery. Sutherland Shire also named Frater’s Avenue in her honour.SourcesAustralian War Memorial http://australia.gov.au/about-

australia/australian-story/women-in-actionThe Australian Women’s Register http://womenaustralia.

info/biogs/AWE0397b.htmBassett, Jan Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing

from the Boer War to the Gulf War, Oxford University Press Australia, 1992

Boer War Memorial www.bwm.org.auKeith Smith, Boer War Memorial researcherMurray, Lt Col P L, RAA (Ret.) Official Records of the

Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa, compiled and edited for the Department of Defence by Lt Col P L Murray RAA (Ret.), Government Printer, Melbourne, 1911, p14

Recollections of Elva E Marsh, nieceWallace, Robert L, Elands River Siege 1900: Australians in

the Boer War: Circumstances Surrounding the Siege of Elands River Post, AMHP, NSW, 2000 (first published 1992)

Wallace, Robert L, The Australians at the Boer War, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1976

Wilcox, Craig Australia’s Boer War, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne Vic, 2002

Miss C M Frater1708 Old Bruce Highway

Raglan Qld 4697Australia

chrisfrater@bigpond.com

Sister Penelope FRATER’s replica Boer War and WWI medals