The Invisible Hospital

For today’s blog post, Clive takes us on a tour of another one of the borough’s Auxiliary Hospitals from World War One. He’s loosely created a mini-series that ties in nicely with Benfleet Hall and the White House in Cheam (do check out these posts – links below!). Unlike these other two, this one proved a challenge to find! Over to Clive…

I became interested in the Auxiliary Hospitals of World War 1 when I was researching houses in Benhill Wood Road, Sutton, and found that the largest of them, Benfleet Hall, had been one from 1915 to 1919 (see this blog post!). The Red Cross VAD [Voluntary Aided Detachment] database (available here) revealed two more such hospitals in what is now the London Borough of Sutton:

• The White House, Cheam
• Wallington Red Cross Hospital in Woodcote Road, Wallington (WRCH)

The former was easy to locate and study, and has been published (see this blog post!) but the latter was much more difficult. You would not expect it to be difficult to locate a hospital if you know the name of the road that it was in but it was!

First, Pile’s Directory for the war years (1914 to 1919) lists no building of that name in Woodcote Road. So, I tried looking on the Ordnance Survey 25 inch map of 1913 (Surrey XIII.16) for buildings which might be of unusual shape or size in comparison to the other houses in Woodcote Road. This attempt failed; they all looked remarkably similar.

From here on, the evidence becomes more circumstantial. I noticed that, of the 43 staff listed in the database, 4 lived in Woodcote Road and one was the only Lady Superintendent of the hospital for its whole existence: Ethel Catherine Everett Fergusson. She lived at Dalnabreck, on the south-east corner of Woodcote Road and Blenheim Gardens, so I decided that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, Dalnabreck was probably the location of WRCH. Incidentally, Dalnabreck is the name of a small village on the west coast of Scotland.

Reverend John Moore Fergusson

Ethel was married to Rev. John Moore Fergusson, the Minister of Wallington Presbyterian Church, which stood at the corner of Woodcote Road and Stafford Road (where Sainsbury’s now stands) from 1911 to 1920. They had four sons: John Donald Balfour (b. 1891), Edward Keith Ogilvy (b. 1893), Alec Everett (b. 1897) and Ian Victor Lyon (b. 1901). They are an interesting family and worth an account in a later blog. For now we note that John and Edward served in the army (Edward was killed in action in 1916), Alec became a medical student in 1915 and later a GP, and Ian became a successful businessman. Ethel had been involved in the administration of the Red Cross VAD, so it may have been an obvious decision to offer the services of Dalnabreck as an auxiliary hospital as casualty numbers grew towards the end of the war. There may be a hint of what we would now call “empty nest syndrome”.

When did the hospital open? This is difficult to tell, because the database only gives the start date of service, and most of the staff had worked in other hospitals before moving here. The Record of Service Cards (which had been scanned and are linked to the database) give more information, but the dates can still be difficult to interpret. However, Ethel’s says that she worked as Lady Superintendent for 12 months, so I shall take the starting date as April 1918, calculating back from the closing date. Most of the staff (including Ethel) terminated their service on 25^th April 1919, so the closing date of the hospital is reasonably clear.

The majority of the staff (32) are listed as nurses, though five combined this with administrative work such as linen-keeping, two also worked in the canteen and one doubled as a masseuse. There was also one ‘trained nurse’, Mrs Annie Emily Tate, who worked on ‘serious cases’ and was not a member of the VAD. She however left in September 1918. There were also three orderlies, three cooks, another masseuse, and a ‘sewer’, who mended clothes and worked mainly from home.

Only twelve staff had no previous service. Of the rest, thirteen had worked at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Carshalton, which had opened as the Southern Hospital in 1908 and became Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children in 1915, several serving with the M.A.B. (the Metropolitan Asylum Board, which established a Nursing Training School here). Also, five had served at the Endsleigh Palace Hospital for Officers (not quite as grand as it sounds; it was the former Endsleigh Palace Hotel in Endsleigh Gardens), and the rest in various local hospitals. Only six continued to work for the Red Cross after WRCH closed.

Although the staffing numbers appear to be broadly comparable to The White House Hospital Cheam, the fact that WRCH operated for slightly longer and the work there appears to be more part-time, suggests that the number of the patients was less than the 20 recorded at The White House. I guess that the number was between 10 and 15. In the desperate last months of the War, even this small number must have been valued.

To try to get some feeling for the life and work of WRCH, I looked at the lives of two members of staff who obtained promotion in service, and had special mentions on their Record of Service Cards: the sisters Janet and Joan Gripper.

Janet Evelyn Gripper (b. 1894) and Bertha Joan Gripper (b. 1895) were daughters of Dr Walter Gripper (b. 1853), a GP in Wallington who from at least 1908 to 1922 was Medical Officer of the Royal Female Orphanage, Beddington. From at least 1905 to 1922 they lived at Walpole House, Manor Road, Wallington. Bertha Joan was known as Joan, presumably because the name Bertha had Germanic connotations.

Janet showed an interest in nursing while still at school, being awarded a medallion at Croydon High School for Girls Prize Day in 1913 for passing ‘First Aid to the injured’, a course which may have been taught by her father (he had taught it in Carshalton as early as 1886). Her work for the VAD was on the administrative side: administering nursing hours at various hospitals from April 1915 before moving to ‘nursing and administration’ at WRCH. She was appointed Assistant Commandant of Surrey/112 in September 1918 and appears to have continued in that capacity after the War. Her Record Card, signed by Commandant Janet Little, states “The Cause has always come first in every way with Miss Gripper. She has been a splendid right hand to me and a most capable organiser, and this VAD owes a great debt to her”. In 1925 she married Lt. Charles Francis Wolley-Dod, who died in Germany in 1937. She travelled to Egypt with Joan in 1927, but I can find no record of when she returned. They appear to have had one child: Hova Charles Kirk, born in 1931. Janet died in the Middlesex Hospital in 1963 while living in Tunbridge Wells.

Joan worked first at Clandon Park Hospital from July 1915 to March 1917, then at Queen Mary’s (M.A.B.) until August 1918 (where she trained as a masseuse), before moving to WRCH. Her Record of Service Card states “Seriously ill. A most splendid V.A.D. Sacrificed herself entirely for cause & endured much without complaint.” After the War she served as a masseuse at Weybridge Hospital, and registered with the CSMMG (Chartered Society of Masseuses and Medical Gymnasts) and the CSP (Chartered Society of Physiotherapists) in 1920. She travelled to work in Egypt from 1927 to 1931. By 1939 she was a masseuse in Eastbourne, living with her mother Evelyn and her younger sister Christabel. She died there in 1995 at the age of 99.

Thinking about how to make the ‘invisible hospital’ more visible, I decided to look for photographs of some of those who worked there. I found one in the David Knights-Whittome Archive: Amy Margaret Hartley, who lived at Limehurst, 32 Springfield Road, Wallington, photographed in uniform on 18 December 1916. She was the subject of a blog in this series, which covers her career as a VAD nurse. Her work can be summed up in the words of her Commandant: “Has given much time willingly and answered extra calls always.” 

Amy Margaret Hartley, David Knights-Whittome Collection (DKW_34863_Hartley_L)