‘Enteric fever was raging badly … We were kept busily engaged for a long time; too busy, in fact, to be able to make many enquiries about the progress of the war … Funerals, alas, as many as twenty a day have passed this place, which is near the cemetery, and always seven or eight every afternoon. And as I write they are sounding the “Last Post” on the bugle at another funeral.’1
AT A TIME when a wave of patriotism was sweeping through British colonies following the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899, the Adelaide Observer highlighted the roles played by soldiers and nurses. ‘The duty of the soldier may be more dangerous, but the task of the nurses is an onerous one … It is courage of a high order that takes a man to battle to fight for the Queen and country and it is true womanly sympathy, allied with courage, that includes the weaker sex to travel half the world … to tend to the sick and wounded … to take up their share in the fierce struggles for the freedom in the Transvaal.’2 One such courageous woman was Martha Bidmead, a British-born Australian who returned from the war with the coveted Royal Red Cross medal – she was the first South Australian to earn this award.
Martha Sarah Bidmead was born on 5 December 1862 on Guernsey in the Channel Islands. The daughter of Thomas Benjamin Bidmead, a tobacconist, and his wife Anne, she lived in the Channel Islands until the age of twenty-two, when she and her four sisters immigrated to South Australia after the death of both their parents. They sailed into Adelaide harbour on 30 April 1885 on the John Elder. Martha embarked upon her nursing career at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in July 1886, and was a charge nurse there from 1887 to 1889. Then, for the next eight years, she engaged in private nursing, and in 1898 was appointed staff nurse at Burra Burra District Hospital, about 150 kilometres north of Adelaide.
Following the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899, Martha volunteered for war service when the South Australian government decided to send a detachment of nurses to South Africa. South Australia was the first Australian colony to grant female suffrage, in 1894, and it was perhaps no coincidence that so much support by women, not only for the war effort, but also for the nurses, came from this part of Australia. Imperial loyalty, of course, was a strong motivating factor in going to Africa, but just as important were a spirit of adventure and a keen desire to travel.
Martha was put in charge of a group of five nurses – which became known as the South Australian Transvaal Nurses – who sailed from Melbourne for Cape Town on the Australasian on 21 February 1900. She was a born leader, short in stature but with an energetic nature, arresting personality and a deep, rich voice. The names of the six nurses had been announced on 10 February. Given that selection had only begun in early February, and that the nurses had to be in Melbourne on 21 February to board the ship, there was very little time for out-fitting and preparation. Unlike other Australian colonial nursing contingents bound for Africa, the South Australians were supported solely by their community. The chosen six were Martha, Amelia Stephenson, A. Glennie, Mary O’Shanahan, A. Cocks and E. Watts – all trained, experienced nurses over thirty years of age (Martha was thirty-seven at the time).
According to the Adelaide Chronicle of 24 February 1900, ‘the noble little band of nurses for the Transvaal took their departure from Adelaide by the Melbourne express on Monday afternoon’. It also mentioned ‘the large crowd which choked the railway station and the street in its vicinity’, and noted that ‘every available nurse from the city and suburbs was present at Parliament House to form a guard of honour’. The crowd in the station itself was ‘immense’, and ‘numerous were the presents thrust through windows at the last moment’. Just before the train moved out of the station, Martha said to a reporter, ‘This is only play, but I trust we shall be of service.’3
Before any Australian nurses left the continent, the sieges of Mafeking, Kimberley and Ladysmith had all begun, and Britain had suffered defeats at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso during the ‘Black Week’ from 10 to 16 December 1899. By the time the South Australians arrived in Cape Town on 19 March 1900, both Kimberley and Ladysmith had been relieved, and Bloemfontein was occupied by the British; the tide had begun to turn against the Boers.
The six nurses worked under the authority of the British Army while in South Africa, but had to report regularly to the South Australian chief secretary, as the South Australian government was paying their fares and salaries (fifteen shillings a week). Their first posting was to No. 2 General Hospital in Wynberg, Cape Town, until June 1900, when they were sent to No. 10 General Hospital in Bloemfontein.
Martha wrote regularly to members of the Nurses’ Fund Committee (usually to Lady Brown) describing their experiences, and her letters, which were published in the Adelaide Observer, provide an insight into conditions in the hospitals and the struggle against contagious diseases. In addition to treating the wounded, the six women nursed cases of enteric fever and dysentery. They had come to South Africa expecting to nurse the wounded; instead they were faced with enteric-plagued Bloemfontein.
In a letter home, Martha described their experiences at No. 2 General Hospital in Wynberg. The hospital, which had opened four months earlier on 1 December, was situated on a parade ground and consisted of ninety-nine marquees. It contrasted sharply with No. 1, which was housed in permanent barracks and huts just above it. ‘No. 2 Hospital, Winburg [sic], is all under canvas,’ she wrote on 8 April 1900. ‘No. 1 is in huts, therefore considered very superior … Our tents, or wards hold six cots each, and the whole hospital can accommodate about 600. Each sister has six tents to look after, and when we are short-handed may have as many as fifteen.’4 The situation was clearly difficult, as Dr Francis Fremantle of the British Army had earlier recorded: ‘No. 2 has opened over the way [from No. 1] with one hundred bad cases from Modder River, our hospital being full up with six hundred cases and more. They are to have seventy marquees, each to contain six beds, or at a stretch eight, which would be a tight fit. The floor is of wood or tarpaulin, and it all looks neat and comfortable, although a bit dark for surgical work.’5
The Australian nurses worked under the same conditions as the British, and were treated as honorary officers. Martha was clearly bemused by this:
I could not realize that the sisters are on the same level as the doctors; they all have the rank of lieutenant. At first Mr. Cooper, my house-man, and I used to get considerably mixed going in and out of the tents. He would be stepping back to allow me to pass out first, and I would be dodging behind him for the same reasons. It used to be quite a set to ‘partners’ affair. But now I am quite used to it, and sail out with as much dignity as remains to one after crawling under the doorway of some of those very low-pitched tents.6
As in other hospitals, there were tensions between nurses employed for service in the war (the reserves) and the military nurses of the British Army Nursing Service; the latter were referred to as the ‘Netley Sisters’, after the large Netley Hospital in Southampton where they received their training. Martha wrote that the ‘Netley Sisters, who pretty well rule this place, are accustomed to be as mere lay figures or figureheads. They do nothing but take temperatures, give stimulants, and sometimes wash a patient’s hands and face if his temperature is very high. So they do not look with exactly loving eyes on the civilian sisters, who are accustomed to and expect work.’7 There were tensions too between the colonial nurses and the local nurses – the latter felt resentful towards the colonials, whom they perceived were taking their jobs. Martha herself was not very impressed with the abilities of the orderlies, as is evident from this sarcastic remark: ‘Their ways of nursing enteric are marvellous – that is the only word for it. I am sure your cape would stand upright, and your hair, too. Mine nearly did at first.’8
It did not take Martha long to adapt to military camp life in South Africa, as this humorous observation demonstrates: ‘One must not expect all the luxuries of the habitable globe when on “active service”, and by now we have attained the luxury of a table and six chairs; at first we had three boxes. Two looking glasses and a lamp make us imagine ourselves in Paris almost.’9
As a highly disciplined person, Martha admired this quality in others. She couldn’t help but notice the exemplary behaviour of the British soldiers, whose bedside lockers were a model of neatness and order, something the happy-go-lucky Australian soldiers could generally not be bothered with.
Sometime after the middle of April, the South Australian nurses were attached to No. 10 General Hospital, partly situated at Grey College in Bloemfontein, which had been occupied by the British since 13 March. At the time, Bloemfontein was bordered in the north by the slopes of Naval Hill, and in the south by Queen’s Fort and the burial ground today known as President Brand Cemetery. Before 1900, the town had 7 000 residents, but with the arrival of the British troops, the population swelled to 41 000. Many of their encampments were located to the south and south-west, and a cluster of trees known as ‘the willows’ was a central point for the collection of clean water. Nearby, to the south-west, was Portland Hospital, while to the west lay No. 8 General Hospital, with its marquee tents on the veld. Between the eastern slopes of Naval Hill and the railway lay No. 9 General Hospital.
Bloemfontein, literally ‘a town on the veld’, had developed into a city whose beauty the British appreciated. It was a refuge to the exhausted troops who arrived there. W.E. Sellers – a chaplain who had arrived with Roberts’s troops – described it thus:
It is a matter for thankfulness that the town was spared the horrors of a bombardment. It was far too beautiful to destroy. Of late years, as money had poured into the treasury, much had been expended upon public buildings. The Parliament Hall, for instance, had been erected at a cost of £80,000. The Grey College [where Martha was also stationed] was a building of which any city might be proud. The Post Office was quite up to the average of some large provincial town in this country, and several other imposing buildings proved that the capital of the Orange Free State, though small, was ‘no mean city’ … The veldt was around it everywhere. It showed up now and then in the town where it was least expected, as though to assert its independence and remind the dwellers in the city that their fathers were its children. Wonderfully healthy is this little city. Situated high above sea level, with a climate so bracing and life-giving that the phthisis bacillus [tuberculosis] can hardly live in it, it seemed to our soldiers, after their long march across the veldt, a veritable City of Refuge.10
Despite Bloemfontein’s healthy climate, however, thousands of British soldiers were laid low; indeed, many had already died from the typhoid epidemic caused by contaminated water from the Modder River at Paardeberg, where General Piet Cronjé had surrendered on 27 February with more than 4 000 men. When Martha and the other five nurses arrived, the New South Wales Hospital Field Brigade were just vacating the artillery barracks; the latter were leaving for the front, and so the South Australian nurses were placed in sole charge of No. 10 General Hospital, where they were to remain for the next five months or so.
Shortly after arriving, Martha described the hospital as follows: ‘No. 10 is the R.A.M.C., Royal Army Medical Corps, a very big affair, and it is taking over all the public buildings in the town as hospitals, our artillery barracks included. They also have Parliament House [the Raadzaal], and sixty beds in the theatre.’11
Two years later, Martha would vividly recall the situation in Bloemfontein in a newspaper interview:
Enteric fever was raging badly during that period, and we were kept busily engaged for a long time; too busy, in fact, to be able to make many enquiries about the progress of the war. There were a number of wounded Boer prisoners, including Commandant Banks, in our hospital. They were of a rather sullen disposition … During the time we were at the Artillery Barracks we had 500 cases under our charge, and out of these only 27 deaths occurred. Nearly all the deaths resulted from enteric fever, and very few from wounds. I can tell you we felt proud of our splendid record. We gained wonderful experience. At first we were short of some necessary articles for our work, but that was not to be wondered at, considering the crowded state of the hospitals in such a short time, and that there was only one railway for forwarding everything required from Cape Town. In fact, it is surprising how such splendid arrangements could have been made in so short a period of time. I had only a small knife for spreading the poultices, and as every minute was precious to me I used a bayonet for the work. It acted so efficiently that I continued to use it afterwards.12
The epidemic raged throughout April and May, and Martha captured the sombre atmosphere of the Free State capital: ‘Funerals, alas, as many as twenty a day have passed this place, which is near the cemetery, and always seven or eight every afternoon. And as I write they are sounding the “Last Post” on the bugle at another funeral.’13 On 18 June, she wrote: ‘We are working harder than ever. I am on night duty and running the hospital by myself, but the surgeon-general has promised us more sisters, who are on their way up. I am sorry to tell you Nurse O’Shanahan is in bed with enteric, but she is doing well, keeps very cheerful, takes her nourishment well, and does not worry. She has done such good honest work, it seems hard that she should be laid by in the midst of it.’14
In addition to dealing with these difficulties and demands, the nurses had to endure the severe cold of the Orange Free State winter. ‘It is bitterly cold,’ wrote Martha’s colleague, Nurse Watts, who nevertheless appreciated the prettiness of the winter landscape, describing the veld as ‘quite a picture in the morning, white with frost’.15
When spring came, Martha’s group was disbanded, but because several patients were too ill to be moved, sisters Watts, Cocks and Stephenson continued their duties. Sister Glennie was put in charge of a small hospital, Old St Andrew’s, where the patients were mostly convalescent, while Sister O’Shanahan was stationed at Dame’s College. In a letter written on 23 September, Martha mentioned that while helping a Boer general pack for the journey to the prisoner-of-war camp in Cape Town, it occurred to her that some of her letters may have got lost or been misappropriated for the sake of the stamps they bore. Though she had reported every month since landing in Africa to the Nurses’ Fund Committee, her letters were written at odd times, whenever she was able to write in the rush of work that occupied her from morning to night; business and all other considerations vanished from view during these stressful periods.
Despite the fact that her group had been disbanded, on 1 December Martha was still busily occupied at No. 10 General Hospital where, she said, ‘a bed is no sooner emptied than it is reoccupied. No. 8 received 60 wounded soldiers the other day from De Wet’s Dorp. We had not nearly enough beds for them. There is no word yet of our leaving South Africa. They have enteric at Pretoria and we are told we may expect its reappearance there when the rains sob in. There are only about 7,000 or 8,000 troops at present here, so the sickness cannot be nearly as severe as it was during April, May, and June of last year.’16
The hospitals experienced severe difficulty procuring food supplies such as fresh milk and vegetables. In a telling image, Martha describes the devastation of the war: ‘The land is as bare as if a swarm of locusts had gone over it. The farmers are in exile or on commandoes. Everything is shockingly dear.’ She also mentions wire fences barricading streets leading from the town, restrictions on walks or drives, and the requirement that passes be shown on leaving or entering the town. There were frequent alarms, and civilians as well as soldiers were on guard all night.17
In March 1901, Martha became ill and was given a fortnight’s leave. She travelled to the Cape, but because the journey took five days each way, very little time had remained for rest and refreshment. After her return to Bloemfontein, she was assigned light duties at No. 5 Stationary Hospital, where nurses O’Shanahan and Watts were also stationed. Nurse Stephenson was now at No. 9 General Hospital (soon afterwards, No. 10 General Hospital was moved to Norval’s Pont).
There was a flurry of excitement when Major General Baden-Powell (later Lord Baden-Powell) arrived one afternoon and took afternoon tea with the nurses, seemingly perfectly at home among so many women. When he visited his men afterwards in the hospital, his manner was equally agreeable and accommodating, and he gave each of them his autograph.
Writing from No. 5 Stationary Hospital on 28 March, Martha said that she was now the sole South Australian nurse left in Bloemfontein. The authorities in Pretoria had wired urgently asking for volunteers – with the enteric epidemic in the city, the hospitals were full to overflowing. They were especially short-staffed because all the newly arrived sisters and medical staff who were not yet acclimatised had also succumbed. Nurses Glennie, Watts and O’Shanahan volunteered, and they left on 19 March, a year to the day that they had first landed in Cape Town. Martha had decided not to join them, explaining that she was ‘feeling run down, and not up to taking part in another rush of work without some sort of a rest first’.18 It was believed that the comparative rest would help her to recover her strength. ‘I was certainly not ill enough to come in as a patient myself, as the doctor wished me. Six weeks of peace and quietness, tonics, and drives with invalided sisters, has done its work. I am once more feeling extremely well and fit, and putting on flesh rapidly.’19
The hospital where she recovered was accommodated in the Bishop’s Lodge, which had been taken over in May 1900 and fitted out with an additional sixteen beds for the large number of nursing sisters afflicted with typhoid. ‘Oh! how delightful the rest and quietness of it all after ten months of constant rush and the turmoil of a military hospital, with its reliefs of orderlies, parades, bugle calls, &c, &c.,’ she wrote. ‘The late bishop apparently had no relations, so all his belongings are just as he left them. There is something very pathetic about it all, so many traces of his tastes and occupations. There are lovely pictures and any number of books.’ However, her old compulsion nagged, and she knew that her days were numbered in that peaceful setting, with its pictures and books: ‘Much as I am enjoying my stay, and the work here, it will not be very long before I apply either to be moved on to Pretoria or to return to nurturing the soldiers. There is not enough here to keep one occupied sufficiently when one is well and strong. One wonders how much longer our services are likely to be required, but of course no one has the least idea.’20
At the time, the ‘De Wet drives’ were in full force – initiated by Lord Kitchener, the British went all out to capture the elusive Boer general, Christiaan de Wet. Martha recorded:
Some twelve days ago we had six or seven flying columns after De Wet in turn; they rushed in for provisions and clothing. Poor souls, the weather was wet and cold, and when their overcoats blew back one could see mostly rags. They crowded the stores and left them practically empty. Eggs rose to 7/6, and in some cases 10/- per dozen. Even now they are 6/-, and not always fresh, at that. One met hundreds of men with bundle-handkerchiefs filled. Several columns came in in the morning, and were off again by the evening. No rest for them, and one felt inclined to take them in and ‘mother’ them. They looked so tired, and yet they were really very fit.21
In spite of these pathetic columns of soldiers, the Boers were still fairly active in the area. When it was suggested that the nurses visit some nearby farms, the principal medical officer refused – he was responsible for their safety, and though everything seemed to be quiet, he was concerned that a party of Boers might suddenly appear. The hospital staff was later even more cut off, when, in an attempt to contain the enteric plague, the trains no longer ran to the south.
By the end of June, Martha had returned to Grey College, this time as acting superintendent sister. ‘It is a responsible post, as I have to do all the house-keeping for the sisters, and have a ward as well,’ she recorded. ‘I undertook this work with many misgivings, though I was quite aware it is a great compliment, a clear case of “Advance Australia”.’ She had recovered her spirits, as is clear from the cheerful, newsy tone of her letter:
Nurse Mary O’Shanahan is, I expect, by this time in England. Sister Glennie, I suppose you have heard, was not well, and had been at Johannesburg for a holiday. Sister Watts is still at No. 2 General Hospital. I have not heard anything definite of Misses Cock[s] and Stephenson for some time … I am having a serge uniform made. It will be more satisfactory, as the one sent just a year ago needed so much attention. I intended writing you a respectable letter, but I left it too late, and this will only just catch the mail.22
In the same letter, Martha enclosed a snapshot of two nursing sisters in their night-duty uniform – a soldier’s overcoat and top boots, which was the only practical attire for going from tent to tent at night, especially when there was heavy rain. Because the hospital was in a summer-rainfall region, and cloudbursts were common, the area quickly turned into a quagmire. She also included two other pictures: one of the Boer fortifications at ‘Spitz Kop’, and one of Bishop’s Lodge.
Three months later, she wrote to Lady Brown of the Nurses’ Fund Committee with news that Grey College would close as a hospital at the end of September, and that the staff would soon be dispersed. ‘By the time this hospital really closes I shall have been acting superintendent for five months,’ Martha wrote. She also referred to the honour of having been awarded the Royal Red Cross medal, which she was to receive in London in March the following year. Ever modest, she lamented the fact that the other nurses had been overlooked for the same honours. ‘You will, I know, rejoice with me over my honours, but I do wish some of the others could share in them. I am disappointed at being the only one, because some of them worked every bit as hard as I did, and equally deserve honours. It was really the accident of seniority which brought my name first.’23
When she again wrote to Lady Brown, on 19 November, Martha was already at No. 1 General Hospital in Wynberg, where she was awaiting a transport to England. Nine days later, she left Cape Town aboard the hospital ship Dilwara. She was in charge of a large contingent of sick and wounded servicemen. According to the London Times of 4 December 1901, of the sick there were forty-five in bed and 391 convalescent; of the wounded, twelve were in bed and fifteen convalescent. Apart from Martha, there were four other nursing sisters on board – all surely pleased to disembark when they arrived in Southampton on Christmas Eve.
Nearly three months later, Martha was awarded the Royal Red Cross. She was the first South Australian since the war, and one of only three Australian nurses, to receive this medal, which was presented to her and her colleague, Elizabeth Nixon, at St James’s Palace on 12 March 1902. At the ceremony, an overawed Martha almost fell into the arms of one of the soldiers in her efforts to see the king.24 Later, she also received the Queen’s and King’s South African Service medals, and in June was presented with the Devoted Service Cross, a decoration awarded by the South Australian Nurses’ Association. She returned to Adelaide on board the RMS Omrah in early June 1902.
‘When I was there [in London] it made my blood boil to hear some of the false charges against the British for their treatment of the Boers in the concentration camps,’ she told a reporter of the Adelaide Advertiser on 17 June. ‘Although I have not been in the camps, I had spoken to friends who had, and I knew that the statements circulated were incorrect,’ she added, as history would show, rather naively. ‘I was asked when in London if I would go back to South Africa again, but declined, as I knew that my services were not so much needed as at the beginning of the war.’25
Martha arrived home with several interesting souvenirs from the war. Among them was a handmade shield, displaying a large number of badges, including those of the Black Watch, the Staffordshire Regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders, the Royal Horse Artillery, and the Seventeenth Lancers or ‘Death or Glory Boys’. The shield was the handiwork of a group of convalescent soldiers who had been rather noisy and were bothering the other patients. Martha devised a plan to keep them quiet, suggesting that they make a shield. The plan worked, and for two days there was a still, peaceful atmosphere in the ward.
She went on to tell the Adelaide Advertiser:
The soldiers were very grateful for anything that was done for them, and wanted to make some presentations in return. I protested, saying they should take them to those nearer and dearer to them. One man who was wounded in an engagement had his badge discoloured by the missile which injured his arm. He asked me to accept the badge us a reward for my kindness, but I refused it. However, he persisted, and said, ‘It’s no good me taking that home, as the old woman would only throw it outside.’ Although I stoutly refused to take some presents I found that I had to accept them after all, as they were left addressed to me.26
Other relics of the war included a small collar and bell made of pom-pom and Mauser cartridges.
At the time of Martha’s return, nurses O’Shanahan, Cocks and Watts were still in South Africa, while Nurse Glennie had returned shortly before. Nurse Stephenson had returned to South Australia much earlier, at the end of August 1901. On landing in Adelaide, the latter described her experiences at Wynberg Hospital, where they had treated the Paardeberg wounded: ‘The sights were not so terrible as might be supposed, because the nickel bullet generally used makes a small, clean puncture. The expanding bullet makes a gaping wound. We lived under canvas for three weeks at Wynburg [sic], and we rather liked the life. It was quite a new experience for us.’27 In Bloemfontein, where ‘fever and dysentery were very prevalent complaints’, Boer wounded were grateful to the nurses, she said, attributing their general taciturnity to bitterness towards the British. Boer and British wounded were treated alike by the nurses, who worked long hours from early in the morning until about ten o’clock at night. She candidly admitted that she did not like military nursing at all, mainly because there was ‘such a frightful lot of red tape’. Also, the nurses ‘were hampered through the necessary equipment not coming up’. She described the transport hazards, the terrible mortality rate, and the nurses’ heavy workload:
The line from Cape Town to Pretoria is single and narrow gauge. The track was often torn up by the Boers, and we were greatly delayed in our work in consequence. During the first four months of our stay at Bloemfontein there were on an average 30 deaths a day. The hospital was adjacent to the cemetery. The dead were sewn up in their blankets for burial, but we had so much to do that we hadn’t time to think much about such terrible things.28
After the tribulations of her Anglo-Boer War service, Martha Bidmead resumed her career in private nursing in South Australia. Then, from 1912 to 1926, she held the position of superintendent of the District Trained Nursing Society of South Australia, which provided home nursing care for the poor. Much of the society’s success was due to her administrative ability – which also benefited the South Australian branch council of the Australian Trained Nurses’ Association, where she was secretary from 1920 to 1926.
After her retirement in 1926, Martha spent most of her time gardening and playing bridge with her friends. She spent her last years at Guernsey Cottage, which she shared with her sisters in Payneham, in Adelaide. Fourteen years after her retirement, on 23 July 1940, she died of a neurological disorder; her remains lie in Payneham, in the city she had made her home over half a century before.