World War I

Jan

2022

Frances Stephanie Cora Ashlin

Frances Ashlin was a VAD nurse who worked alongside Clarice Molloy and Molly Evans at No 2 General Hospital, Le Havre and First Western Hospital Birkenhead. Like Clarice Molloy she was Catholic and Irish, but was born in Cork and did her first nursing service in Cork. She was born on 3 Jun 1880. Her uncle was the well known Irish architect, George Coppinger Ashlin, close associate and follower of Augustus Pugin. Continue reading →

Jan

2021

Aileen Mary Moriarty

Aileen Moriarty was a nurse, who served alongside Molly Evans and Clarice Molloy at the Queen Alexandra Hospital at Dunkirk, 1917-1918. Her father Arthur Stephen Moriarty, an Indian Civil servant, had died in 1900 when she was five. The Moriartys were Oxford educated, half Irish, born in France and Catholic. Aileen’s uncle, Louis Martin Moriarty (1855-1930) was French master at Harrow School and seemingly the only teacher who Winston Churchill got on with! Continue reading →

Jan

2021

Mary Elizabeth Lloyd (née Edginton)

Mary Edginton was the youngest daughter of Robert William Edginton, an Edgbaston Doctor and Elizabeth Baker Showell, his wife. She was born on 10 Jul 1890 and married Ernest Robert Vivian Lloyd in 1918. She was a first cousin to Noel Downing. Both their mothers were daughters of the brewer Walter Showell. Continue reading →

Jan

2021

George MacPherson of Edinglassie Lodge

George MacPherson was born on 28 May 1851 in Edinglassie Lodge, Aberdeenshire. He became an Ironmaster and industrialist based in the West Midlands, living in Lloyd House, Penn. Continue reading →

Sep

2019

Allen Basil Bratton

Allen Basil Bratton was born in Shrewsbury in 1890 the son of Doctor James Allen Bratton. His father died when he was 3. Continue reading →

Jan

2019

Molly Evans’ Nursing Records, 1914-1919

This is a timeline of Molly Evans‘ nursing service during the First World War. She joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) in Aug 1914 and worked in 6 hospitals both in UK and in France until Mar 1919. Continue reading →

Jan

2019

First Western General Hospital, Birkenhead, 1917

On 15 Mar 1917 Molly Evans resumed her nursing service at the First Western General Hospital in Birkenhead. She was joined there by her two friends and colleagues Clarice Molloy and Frances Ashlin. All three had already been working together in France for the best part of a year at the No 2 General Hospital, Le Havre. Continue reading →

Jan

2019

Guest Hospital, Dudley, 1914

Molly Evans signed up to volunteer for the Red Cross on 6 Aug 1914. On 8 Aug she attended an emergency meeting of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), Worcester 16 Branch and on 10 Sep she started one month training as a nurse at the Guest Hospital in Dudley Continue reading →

Jan

2019

Molly uncovers the news of her brother’s death

Captain Charles Wilmot Evans of the 6th South Staffordshires was killed on 1 Jul 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. At the time, his sister Molly Evans was working at the No 2 General hospital in Le Havre. Below are extracts from her diary that chronicle how she found out the news and how it affected those around her. It contrasts with the account of this very same episode narrated in Alan MacDonald’s Book, “Lack of Offensive Spirit” which is based on the records of her letters to the War Office. Continue reading →

Jan

2019

Marriage proposal in Boulogne, 17 Mar 1918

Molly Evans had been working in the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Dunkirk from Sep 1917 and had returned to England on 28 Feb 1918 for two weeks leave to her parents in Hagley, Worcestershire. According to her diary, the two weeks after her return to France, were the most memorable experiences of her life. Molly writes extensively about the bombardment and evacuation of the hospital on the night of 23 Mar 1918, but the whole week of her return to the hospital covered the full range and intensity of experiences of being in a war. Continue reading →

Dec

2018

The Hatton Family of Hagley House

The family of George Hatton moved into Hagley House in about 1912. Hagley House was a large Georgian building on the corner of the Birmingham and Stourbridge Roads. The previous occupant recorded in the 1911 census was Henrietta Moore, the grandmother of Hal Barlow. Henrietta’s husband Joseph Moore, a brick manufacturer, had died there in 1901. Continue reading →

Dec

2018

Harry Loftus Barlow

Hal Barlow was born in Bath on 10 Apr 1888, the son of an army officer. He attended Shrewsbury School, from 1903 to 1905, and was a good friend of both Wilmot Evans and Noel Downing. Continue reading →

Dec

2018

Marie Clarice Molloy

Clarice Molloy served as a nurse in the First World War and was a close colleague of Molly Evans. She was born on 20 Oct 1880 in Hambleden, near Henley on Thames. Her father was the Irish composer and poet James Lynam Molloy who died in 1909. Continue reading →

Dec

2018

The Bystander’s Fragments from France

“Fragments from France” are collections of Captain Bruce Bairnsfather‘s First World War cartoons produced for each issue of “The Bystander”, a weekly magazine. Noel Downing collected and kept 7 volumes of “Fragments” while he was serving with the Welsh Guards in France and they remain in our archive. Continue reading →

Dec

2018

L’Hôpital Militaire Belge de Bonsecours, 1919

Molly Evans left the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Dunkirk on 27 Dec 1918 and transferred to Rouen to L’Hôpital Militaire Belge also known as the Anglo-Belgian Hospital where she served for a further three months until 20 Mar 1919. Continue reading →

Dec

2018

Hospital Evacuation under Fire, Dunkirk, Mar 1918

The following is a narrative account from the diary of Molly Evans, a VAD nurse in the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Dunkirk. She had returned from leave on 17 Mar and the three days from 20 to 23 March 1918 were the worst experienced so far. She wrote up a special piece in the diary to describe it, starting on the evening of 20 Mar 1918. Continue reading →

Nov

2018

Rachel Eveline Wilson

Rachel Wilson was born on 19 Dec 1894 to a wealthy Quaker family in Kidderminster. After the outbreak of the First World War, she trained as a nurse and eventually joined the Queen Alexandra Hospital run by the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU) in Dunkirk in 1917. She became a close friend of Molly Evans. Continue reading →

Nov

2018

Elizabeth Hardy

Elizabeth Hardy was born on 5 Jun 1889, the only daughter of Rev Theodore Bayley Hardy, VC Before 1914 she worked as a schoolmistress, having obtained a degree from London University. After war broke out, she trained with the Red Cross in London and later joined the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Dunkirk on 7 Feb 1917. She became a life-long friend of Molly Evans. Continue reading →

Nov

2018

Armistice Day at the Queen Alexandra Hospital

On Monday 11 Nov 1918 Nurse Molly Evans was at work in the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Dunkirk, a hospital run by the Friends’ Ambulance Unit. Here are her diary entries for the days leading up to the Armistice. Continue reading →

Oct

2018

Future Officers, 4th Public Schools Battalion

The 4th Public Schools Battalion, 21st Royal Fusiliers, did not land in France until Nov 1915, approximately one year after they first gathered in Ashtead, Surrey as newly enlisted recruits. We have pieced together from the photos in Noel Downing‘s (PS/2581) collection, the names and identities of some of his comrades in arms. Continue reading →

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