NURSING in wartime has always been a dangerous job even if you were not on the front line.
Just look at the Brighton nurses in the picture on the below, taken on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
Equipped with gas masks and gas-proof clothing, they were prepared to do their job in the worst possible conditions.
Their professionalism shines in this selection of pictures from The Keep archive in Falmer, taken by Argus photographers.
Brighton’s medical history has always been trailblazing.
It was this city where Dr Helen Boyle, an Irish immigrant who qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh, set up Lady Chichester Hospital, the country’s first facility for early treatment of mental disorders.
The Windlesham Road branch later became the New Sussex Hospital for Women and Children, featured in the picture below.
Like many doctors and nurses in the city, Dr Boyle served in the Armed Forces during the First World War.
Though she served in Serbia, many of the city’s nurses cared for wounded Indian soldiers in Brighton General Hospital, then known as Kitchener Indian General Hospital.
One of those brave nurses was Florence Holdgate, a member of Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps whose possessions were discovered by Brighton Museums.
Having previously served in the corps from 1908, she became ill while abroad in Malta and gave up her duties in 1912.
But two years later she signed up again once the war broke out, posted at the Indian General Hospital until she was transferred to Egypt in 1915.
Battling pain, sickness and headaches, Ms Holdgate treated the wounded in Egypt and served on the HMHS Oxfordshire medical ship transporting injured soldiers to India.
Eventually she was hospitalised with a gastric ulcer in Bombay and transferred to Poona, where she was sent home. By autumn 1916 she had recovered and nursed in Sheffield until the end of the war.
The Keep is currently closed and unable to take orders for photographs. For more information visit thekeep.info.
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