For National Poetry Day

A poem from Dr Isabella Stenhouse's archive, saved from her time in Malta as one of the first women to serve as a doctor with the British Army:

A HOSPITAL CONCERT, MAY 8, 1917

DEDICATED TO A VOICE

She will wish her pure strings to be mute—
Heal us, alone, by thy voice!
We are weak—with an arm, or a foot,
‘Tented,’ or bound, to no choice;
Ours are the bandaged eyes,
A-search for the Singer’s face—
Denials, through darkness, arise,
Pierce it with sound, for a space:
O Singer of Life—so, of pain!
Sing ‘Vita’––thy ‘Vita’––again and again


Ah! those were old words, that we’ve read—
‘O Sempre Amore’—that stirred;
And Love’s for us lads, sick in bed,
And Love is the wounded’s last word;
And a warmth drew in from the street,
And we slipped to an English June,
And England and Italy meet,
And touch the same chord of Love’s tune:
O Singer of Love—lift from pain!
Sing thy ‘Sempre Amore’—again and again!


Then he sank to an under key—
‘O Pena’!—O Pain! is it not?
And we fell to a blind reverie—
For we’ve had our pain, God wot!
We were back in the fever and ache,
Or peered in a pal’s dead face,
Or were feeling the lift and the shake,
And the moan in us down to the Base;
O Singer—though sweetest—of pain!
Sing ‘Pena’—thy ‘Pena’—again and again


Then he wrought us—passionate—loud—
‘Guerra, ah Guerra’!—is it War?
For our slack frames stiffened them proud,
And the men, we were once, we saw—
Over and on to a Leader’s sign,
Tightening their teeth on wild breath,
Spilling their blood like the reddest wine,
While they staked for winning or death!—
O Singer of madness and pain!
Sing ‘Guerra’—’thy Guerra’—again and again!


The ward empties to shuffle and drill—
All but two bedridden rows;
But he’s made eyes,—the dryest—to fill,
He’s breathed all our souls to new glows;
And a pale face, still in a trance—
Is away to the glory of things;
And the crutches tap tap to a prance;
While a voice to the hollowness clings—
O Vita dolce, si sovente amara!
O Sempre Amore—Pena e Guerra!—


Valletta, May 10th, 1917 

F.D.B.

Family Tree Magazine's review of The Mystery of Isabella and the String of Beads

Thanks to Karen Clare of Family Tree Magazine for this new review, printed in the magazine last month:

This delightful memoir-cum-family history mystery was borne out of a collection of memorabilia inherited from the author's adored Scottish grandmother who was – unusually for a woman in WW1 – a doctor.

As well as photos and surgical instruments there is a string of glass beads, which apparently came from a grateful German PoW. And so the author embarks on an ancestral road trip to piece together Isabella's story and discover the origin of the beads. Her investigation takes her from Isabella's grand Leith home to France, Malta and Alexandria in Egypt, via an appearance on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow. The narrative is exciting, while the brief fleets of imagination will spark recognition in many family historians, as the author not only retraces Isabella's steps but breathes new life into her remarkable story.

Buy the book.

Solving mysteries: raising questions

Last month, Family Tree magazine invited me to write a post for their blog. I didn't want to write a spoiler, so I pondered again the whole process of research and writing.

Was it morally acceptable to dig up a story somebody had chosen not to tell?

How black was the line between fact and fancy?

Where did Isabella's story fit in the massive global commemoration of WW1?

This is how I began:

Family tradition held that my grandmother, Isabella Lane (née Stenhouse), had served as a doctor during WW1 - but she never talked about it. Even on her eightieth birthday, when she was presented with a huge tape-recorder and urged to record her memories, she still refused. The machine was untouched when she died sixteen years later, leaving me her medical instruments and a mysterious string of beads - the gift, it was rumoured, of a grateful German prisoner of war. Sometimes I would look at the collection, wondering what story it could have told, but it was forty years before I began to investigate.

You can read the rest of the article here: A String of Beads and a Family Mystery

#OTD 100 years ago: Which women doctors did the army take on?

Thanks to Col. Walter Bonnici’s hard work, I know that on 12th August 1916, Dr Isabella Stenhouse left Southampton on board the HMHS Gloucester Castle. 

Gloucester Castle before decoration in its hospital ship regalia.

She and fifteen other women doctors were joining 22 of their colleagues. Together, they formed the first cohort of women doctors that the British Army had ever dared to recruit. Not that the army was taking the risk of sending them to help with the flood of wounded from the battle raging in the Somme. Oh, no. Rather than let these ‘ladies’ anywhere near the fighting, the army was shipping them to Malta, far away in the Mediterranean.

It was not that these women were inexperienced. 

Isabella had spent 1915 working in France - that story is told in the book.

Georgina Davidson, too, had served with the French Red Cross but, when that job had finished, she had travelled to Serbia to join Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.

Florence Bignold had also worked in Serbia.

Recently qualified Martha Stewart had been forced to retreat from advancing enemy troops while running a surgery for Mrs St Clair Stobart’s Serbian Relief Fund. By way of thanks, the King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had awarded her the Order of St Sava. 

And, as if to cap them all, New Zealander Ada McLaren had spent three full months as a prisoner of the Austrians after being captured while working with the Berry Mission, again in Serbia.

Yet these experiences had deterred none of them from boarding the Gloucester Castle. On this day 100 years ago, they set off for war again. 

Their companions were no less bold: Mabel Hector had worked in India; Elizabeth Moffett was an active suffragist who, on occasion, had refused to pay her taxes, while Katherine Waring was so confident of her abilities that she had signed up only 6 months after qualifying. 

As the ship slipped out of port and headed towards the Bay of Biscay, what was going to happen next?

A Rewarding Read - A Nontraditional Account of WW1

At last! Somebody has explained The Mystery of Isabella and the String of Beads. 

Here's blogger Connie Ruzich's 5* review from Goodreads: 

"This non-fiction book balances two stories, one a biography, the other a mystery. The first story relates the compelling experiences of Isabella Stenhouse, an intrepid Edwardian who was one of the small minority of women in Scotland to be awarded a medical degree at that time. Shortly after graduating from medical school in Edinburgh, Isabella volunteered as a physician and tended the wounded of the First World War in in France, Malta, and Egypt. Her life story is compelling and is augmented with historical insights that deserve a wider understanding and appreciation. From the medical facts of gas gangrene to the social contexts of spiritualism, author Katrina Kirkwood supplements her story with well-researched background information. The book should strongly appeal to anyone with an interest in nontraditional accounts of the First World War and those who wish to learn more about women’s history in the conflict.

The second narrative, interwoven with Isabella Stenhouse’s story, is the journey of Isabella’s granddaughter and her quest to learn more about her grandmother’s unusual war experience. Using family photos and artifacts (including Isabella’s medical instruments and the string of beads referred to in the book’s title), the author sets out to research her grandmother’s life. This part of the story moves from archives in London to forgotten beaches in Alexandria. Using her imagination to speculate on Isabella’s motives and to fill in blank spaces in Isabella’s story, Kirkwood adroitly balances on the tightrope between fact and speculative opinion. Her account of the search for her grandmother’s history should appeal to others who have embarked on a similar quest and is instructive for those who would like to investigate their ancestors’ involvement in the Great War.

An unusual book about an uncommon war experience, Kirkwoods’ fresh perspective on the First World War is a rewarding read."

Thank you, Connie!

Paperback and eBook versions are both available from Amazon and can be ordered from all good bookshops.

The full story available now … at last!

First came the research. Then the fumbling attempts to write it up - the embarrassing first drafts and the constant editing. 

Then there were the rejection slips and the decision that, even if the mainstream didn't want to tell the story of a professional woman navigating her way through WW1, her tale had to be told - it represented the tales of so many other women who were also in danger of being omitted from the centenary commemorations. 

So today, 100 years after the most important centenary of her war, The Mystery of Isabella and the String of Beads: A Woman Doctor in WW1 is available on Amazon or can be ordered through all good bookshops.

A great read, highly recommended! https://t.co/ESyXgVK0xz

— Marina Maxwell (@OfArbeia) July 22, 2016

Only a week to go ...

The Mystery of Isabella and the String of Beads: A Woman Doctor in WW1

Available as ebook or paperback from Amazon or any good bookshop from 25th July.

Here's the blurb.

It was the inscription that made the antique scalpels so tantalising: ‘Isabella Stenhouse’. A woman doctor? A woman doctor who was rumoured to have served in the First World War? Could Isabella have treated wounded men with these very implements? And had a grateful German prisoner of war really given her the strange string of beads that tangled round her stethoscope? 

Coaxing clues from archives across Europe, Katrina Kirkwood traces Isabella's route from medical school to the Western Front, Malta and Egypt, discovering as she travels that Dr Stenhouse was not only one of the first women doctors who worked with the British Army - she was also a woman carrying a tragic secret, torn between ambition and loyalty to her family.

Isabella’s story was selected for the BBC Antiques Roadshow’s WW1 centenary edition, and featured by national, international and local media.

'The quiet heroics of a woman on a WW1 battlefield' Daily Express

The 100 Year Women's War

'Concern had centred on whether women had the physical capability to withstand the demands on their body that some of the roles will require.'

When I read these words last Friday, I was engulfed by a feeling of déjà vu. I had come across this argument time and again during my research. It was, for example, one of the ways in which adults tried to dissuade Edwardian girls from training as doctors. 

But the incarnation I was reading did not come from the Times of 1905. It was live on the BBC website - and not as history, but as news. It related to the government's recent decision to allow women to serve in close combat roles in the British military. 

Now I am no military expert and couldn’t begin to make judgements about this particular case, but I found the parallels fascinating. When I read that: 'Young men and women … will inevitably form relationships and personal issues will disrupt the dynamics of units', I was back with Vera Brittain in her VAD uniform, watching the restrictions that the terrified authorities were placing on volunteer nurses to ‘ensure’ that romance had no chance.

Trawling the internet, I read how: 

'Critics of women in combat roles believe the public could react differently to the death and maiming of female troops. They argue society at large will be more sensitive to casualties among the country’s daughters, wives and mothers than among male soldiers.'

It was a similar anxiety that made the authorities send Dr Isabella Stenhouse and her colleagues, the first women doctors they had ever employed, to Malta. They regarded it as much safer than letting them anywhere near the front line in France.

I read on, and guess what? ‘The rule change comes amid reports of a recruitment crisis and undermanned army reserves.’ Why, undermanning was exactly the problem that faced the army medical services in 1916 - the problem that led them to risk recruiting Dr Stenhouse and her colleagues. 

One compensation is that, a century on: 

‘The government’s decision was taken after research looking into three areas of risk – muscular injury, psychological health and impaired reproductive health – that will now be published.’

I just hope that these new combat-ready women will not suffer the indignities that were imposed on their pioneering military ancestors, the women doctors who signed up with the army this month 100 years ago.

Why July 1916 was an important month for women doctors

Courtesy of Sarah Wilkin from Oxford University's WW1 Centenary blog you can discover why July 1916 was an important month for professional women here:

WW1 Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings

Sarah kindly invited me to submit a post related to my research on Dr Isabella Stenhouse. I was thrilled when she posted it last Friday, the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme.

The Somme was, and is, such a huge event that it overshadows everything else that happened that July one hundred years ago. But for Isabella, July 1916 had another meaning - the 24th was the day she signed up with the Army.

From the start of the war, the Army had refused to employ women doctors but, by that July, the desperate needs of the wounded had broken their resolve and they asked medical women to help them. Isabella was one of the first to sign up.

Blog silence broken - book imminent

Today, I can break twenty months of blog silence. After travelling thousands of miles, visiting numerous libraries and archives, writing countless drafts and receiving a lot of help from kind and generous people, a book about Dr Isabella Stenhouse is imminent.

Publication is set for 25th July, but as a taster, here is the cover, brilliantly designed by Shona Andrew.

Here is the blurb:

It was the inscription that made the antique scalpels so tantalising: 'Isabella Stenhouse'. A woman doctor? A woman doctor who was rumoured to have served in the First World War? Could Isabella have treated wounded men with these very implements? And had a grateful German prisoner of war really given her the strange string of beads that tangled round her stethoscope?

Coaxing clues from archives across Europe, Katrina Kirkwood traces Isabella's route from medical school to the Western Front, Malta and Egypt, discovering as she travels that Dr Stenhouse was not only one of the first women doctors who worked with the British Army - she was also a woman carrying a tragic secret, torn between ambition and loyalty to her family. 

Isabella's story was selected for the BBC Antiques Roadshow's WW1 centenary edition, and featured by national, international and local media. 

'The quiet heroics of a woman on a WW1 battlefield' Daily Express.