Princesses on the Wards E-Book

Coryne Hall

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Queens and princesses have always shown care and compassion, but many went much further. They were not afraid to roll up their sleeves, work in wards or help in field hospitals and operating theatres, despite their sheltered upbringings. Through wars and revolutions across Europe, their experiences were similar to those of thousands of other nurses, but this is the first time that their involvement in nursing and the extent of their influence on the profession has been detailed in full. Beginning with two daughters of Queen Victoria – Princess Alice and Princess Helena – Princesses on the Wards looks at the difficulties these royals faced while carving a worthwhile role in an age when the place of a well-born woman was considered to be in the home. Empress Alexandra of Russia, Queen Marie of Romania, Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, and Princess Alice of Greece (mother of the Duke of Edinburgh) were just a few of Queen Victoria's relatives who set an example of service well beyond that considered necessary for their rank. Not all of them were fully trained nurses, but each made a positive contribution towards alleviating suffering which cannot be overestimated.

Leseprobe

About the Author

Coryne Hall is an historian, broadcaster and consultant specialising in the Romanovs and British and European royalty. The author of many books, she is a regular contributor to Majesty magazine, The European Royal History Journal and Royalty Digest Quarterly. She acted as consultant on the Danish television documentaries A Royal Family and The Royal Jewels, and has lectured at conferences in England, America, Denmark, The Netherlands and Russia. Her media appearances include Woman’s Hour, BBC South Today, live coverage of Charles and Camilla’s wedding for Canadian television and co-hosting live coverage of Prince William’s wedding for Newstalk 1010 Toronto. In 2001 she was the last person to have a private audience with Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. She lives in Hampshire.

To the memory of my parents,Peggy and Ernie Bawcombe.

First published 2014

This paperback edition first published 2022

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© Coryne Hall, 2014, 2022

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 ‘The Calling I Should Have Most Liked to Follow’

2 ‘My One Great Object and Desire’

3 ‘Some Damn Foolish Thing in the Balkans’

4 ‘To Lessen Their Suffering Even in a Small Way’

5 Towards Revolution

6 ‘I Hear We Have a Princess Here’

7 A Small Unconquered Corner

8 ‘Dear Old Harrogate’

9 ‘Is She a Real Princess?’

10 From Italy to Ethiopia

11 Ladies of Spain

12 The World at War Again

13 The Hospital of the Queen’s Heart

14 Post-war Princesses

Family Trees

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote from material in the Royal Archives at Windsor; and the permission of His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh to quote from published letters of Princess Alice (Princess Andrew of Greece) of which he owns the copyright. My thanks also to Pamela Clark, Laura Hobbs and the staff of the Royal Archives, and Dame Anne Griffiths DCVO, archivist to His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, for their invaluable assistance.

The original idea for a book about royal women and nursing came from Robin Piguet, who some years ago suggested it as a feature for Majesty magazine. So my thanks go to Robin, and also to Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty, for encouraging me to expand the original article into a book.

I am immensely grateful to Doña Beatriz de Orleans-Borbón, granddaughter of Infanta Beatrice, who provided information about her grandmother’s work and permitted use of photographs from the Archivo Orleans-Borbón, Fundación Infantes Duques de Montpensier. In this respect a very big thank you must go to Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano, who not only provided me with material, but read and commented on the chapter about Queen Ena and her cousin Infanta Beatrice. Any mistakes, of course, remain my own.

Countess Mountbatten of Burma and Lady Brabourne kindly granted access to the Broadlands Archives and Sandy McGuire made us most welcome. The family of the late Princess Margarita of Baden permitted use of her photograph; Archduke Dominic provided a picture of his mother Princess Ileana of Romania; and Her Royal Highness Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg, Archduchess Carl Christian of Austria, allowed me to use her photograph. I am grateful to them all.

A big thank you also goes to Arturo Beéche of Eurohistory for providing images from the vast eurohistory.com royal photo archive.

A large number of friends have lent me their books and photographs, copied research material, identified pictures, translated text and been ready with useful suggestions. I am also grateful to all the archivists who granted me access to their collections. To everyone listed below I therefore extend my thanks. Your help was really appreciated, and without it the book would have been all the poorer.

In Britain: Janet Ashton; Robert Baker, archives officer of Blind Veterans UK (formerly St Dunstan’s); Nicholas Baldwin, archivist at Great Ormond Street Hospital; Harold Brown; Sarah Cox, museum and archives assistant of the British Red Cross; Richard Davies, archivist at Leeds Russian Archive; Nicola Dyke at the Pump Room Museum, Harrogate; Stewart Gillies at The British Newspaper Library Colindale; His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent; His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent; Ann Kent at Tyne & Wear Archives; Sue Light of the Scarletfinders website; Diana Manipud and Lianne Smith at King’s College London Archives; Marion Roberts and the staff of Bordon Library; Karen Robson and the staff of the Hartley Library, University of Southampton; Ian Shapiro; John Van der Kiste; Hugo Vickers; Katrina Warne; John Wimbles; Stella Wiseman; Sue Woolmans; Marion Wynn; Charlotte Zeepvat.

In Belgium: Olivier Defrance; Professor Dr Gustaaf Janssens, director of The Royal Archives, Brussels; Christophe Vachaudez; Professor Robert Van Hee, M.D., PhD., emeritus professor of surgical and medical history at the University of Antwerp.

In Brazil: Alberto Penna Rodrigues.

In Denmark: Jesper Lillelund at The Royal Danish Arsenal Museum, Copenhagen; Stig Nielsen.

In Germany: Florien Heitzmann at the Press Office, Insel Mainau; GunnaWendt.

In Italy: Luciano Regolo.

In Luxembourg: Pierre Bley, Maréchal de la Cour; Josette Neiertz-Mehling; Liviana Pannacci of the Archives Grand-Ducales, Berg.

In the Netherlands: Mrs H.G. Eerkes, Private Secretary to Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands and Professor Pieter van Vollenhoven; Netty Leistra; Marianne Teerink-Kouwenhoven.

In Russia: Galina Korneva; Yuri Shelayev of Liki Rossii publishers, St Petersburg.

In Spain: Don Miguel Ruiz Cabrera at Archivo General de Palacio, Palacio Real, Madrid; Don Javier Gonzáles de Vega.

In Sweden: Ted Rosvall, of Rosvall Royal Books.

In Switzerland: Her Royal Highness Princess Marie-Gabrielle of Savoy; Karen Roth-Nicholls.

In the United States of America: Mark Andersen; Marlene Eilers Koenig; Mary Ann Fogarty; Professor Joseph T. Fuhrmann; Griffith Henniger III; Dr William Lee; Ilana D. Miller.

My thanks also go to everyone at The History Press, particularly my commissioning editor Lindsey Smith for having faith in the project from the beginning, and Mark Beynon and Lauren Newby who saw it through to completion.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders. We will be happy to correct any errors and make suitable acknowledgement in a future edition.

Last, but by no means least, thanks to my husband Colin, who never expected someone as squeamish as me to write a book about nurses. He helped with the research, kept things running smoothly while I was busy on the computer and read numerous drafts of the text. Without his constant support and encouragement the book would never have been possible.

INTRODUCTION

Royal ladies have always aided the sick. In 1148, Queen Matilda founded the Royal Hospital and Collegiate Church of St Katharine by the Tower and reserved the choice of master to all the queens of England who would follow her. Since then, royal women have patronised, endowed and founded – but their place was certainly not caring for the sick and wounded in a hospital ward. In peacetime it was not considered appropriate for them to nurse. However, war was instrumental in changing that perspective.

As the men flocked to war, European queens and princesses wanted to ‘do their bit’ for their country. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, as conflicts broke out all over the continent, they volunteered as Red Cross nurses. This they believed was an entirely appropriate activity in which they could contribute. Through wars and revolutions they were not afraid to roll up their sleeves, work in the wards and help in the operating theatre. These experiences were similar to those of thousands of others and yet they were shared by a group of dedicated royal ladies who wanted to go that extra mile.

It was not always as easy as they had expected, as one young woman recalled:

I can remember well the half-sick feeling which I at first experienced from the horror of the wounds and the smell of the blood ... This became a constant sensation during the hours when the men were first received and their wounds dressed; but it was always offset by excitement, by intense interest in the poor fellows themselves, and by the natural desire to relieve their suffering.1

This sensation was probably felt even more acutely by women brought up in a palace, although I suspect that few princesses went as far as the Duke of Rutland’s daughter Lady Diana Manners, who before volunteering went down to the kitchen of her parents’ London home and saw an animal gutted, ‘to prepare me for operations’.2

For princesses accustomed to a life of luxury and privilege, nursing was a revelation. It gave them a sense of freedom and liberation which in ordinary circumstances, when they were strictly chaperoned, they could never experience. Most of them had hardly ever travelled overnight without a maid to help them undress. Nevertheless they did not hesitate to volunteer for work in front-line hospitals.

In Russia, Greece, Spain, Romania, Belgium and Britain, Empress Alexandra of Russia; Queen Marie of Romania; Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent; and Princess Alice of Greece (mother of the Duke of Edinburgh) were among the many royal women who set an example of service and duty well beyond that considered necessary at the time. None requested any privileges, they wanted to be treated the same as everyone else. They became the human face of royalty.

For some, donning a nurse’s uniform was simply good propaganda. For others it was more than a symbolic gesture, it involved real hospital work, unaccustomed physical effort and mental activity. In most cases they were unable to devote all their time to nursing – they had other duties to perform, especially in the case of the higher-ranking ladies, but whatever time they could spare was used to the best of their ability.

Many of these ladies were awarded the Royal Red Cross. The medal was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1883 for women of the Military Nursing Service who had shown exceptional devotion and competency in the performance of their nursing duties, or for exceptional acts of bravery and devotion while on duty. The gold cross is edged with red enamel and had the words ‘Faith, Hope, Charity’ engraved on the arms with the date, 1883. The queen’s head appeared in relief in the centre with the Imperial crown and cipher on the reverse. The dark blue ribbon, edged in red, was worn tied in a bow on the left shoulder. Among the early recipients were the queen’s daughters: the Crown Princess of Prussia, Princess Christian and Princess Beatrice; her daughters-in-law the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Connaught; and her cousin the Duchess of Teck (mother of the future Queen Mary). Others were awarded a Red Cross Medal from their own, or another foreign country.

The Red Cross was at the heart of nursing work. The International Committee for the Relief of Military Wounded was formed in 1863 and owed its existence to Swiss-born Henri Dunant. His book A Memory of Solferino, published at his own expense the previous year, gave a vivid description of the 1859 battle and the suffering he witnessed on the battlefield afterwards. His account shocked Europe: ‘At the beginning of the century,’ wrote The Times, ‘the hospitals which followed armies in the field, or which remained to mark the site of some battlefield after the armies had passed on, were little better than charnel houses.’ Dunant called for: ‘some sacred international principles, sanctioned by convention, which, once signed and ratified would serve as the basis for the creation of societies for the aid of the wounded in the different European countries.’3

The result was the Geneva International Conference, which discussed measures to help the wounded on the battlefield and to protect neutral medical services and field hospitals. The Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field was drafted and approved, and in 1867 the First International Conference of the Red Cross was held. Their emblem, a red cross against a white background (the reverse of the Swiss flag), ‘was to be accepted as the universal emblem for all medical people and places, whether on a flag or as an armband’.4

This is not a history of nursing, nor of the Red Cross, but the story of several queens and princesses who volunteered to help their fellow human beings. There were many royal nurses, particularly among the German royal families. I have therefore concentrated, with a couple of notable exceptions, on those with British links or with links to Queen Victoria.

Beginning with two of the queen’s daughters, Princess Alice and Princess Helena, this book will show the difficulties they faced and the successes they achieved while carving out a worthwhile role. They were all born royal and not all of them were fully trained nurses, but each of them made a positive contribution to alleviating suffering.

Notes

1. Mary Allsebrook, Born to Rebel: The Life of Harriet Boyd Hawes (Oxbow Books, 1992) p.47.

2. Quoted in Pamela Horn, Ladies of the Manor (Alan Sutton, 1991), p.209.

3.The Times, 28 April 1883.

4. Caroline Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream (Harper Collins, 1998), p.45.

1

‘THE CALLING I SHOULD HAVE MOST LIKED TO FOLLOW’

Florence Nightingale returned from the Crimean War in 1856 as a national heroine. ‘I envy her being able to do so much good and look after the noble heroes,’ Queen Victoria wrote, full of admiration.1 Inviting Miss Nightingale to dine at Balmoral, the queen was surprised to find her quiet, ladylike and extremely modest. She so enjoyed their discussion on the defects of the military hospital system that she later drove over to Birkhall unattended to continue the conversation. Yet even if Victoria had really wished ‘to lead a private life, tending the poor and sick’, as she wrote ten years later, it would have been impossible.2

Miss Nightingale made a profound impression on the royal family and, for some of the queen’s descendants, tending the poor and sick became almost a way of life. Well to the forefront was Victoria’s second daughter, Princess Alice. Born on 25 April 1843, Alice had a strong desire to help others and was sensitive to suffering. In 1855, she and her eldest sister Vicky accompanied the queen on a tour of the London Hospital to visit soldiers wounded in the Crimea. On the Balmoral estate, Alice visited the cottagers to learn about their lives and see what could be done to help. Her health was never strong but in 1861, with Vicky now married to Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, it fell to Alice to comfort the queen after the death of her mother, the Duchess of Kent. Later that year, during the final illness of the prince consort, Alice showed a maturity and presence of mind which belied her 17 years and the young princess was transformed by the experience. Despite her own grief she looked after her mother, sleeping in her room at night and displaying the care and compassion of a trained nurse. She had, said her grandson, ‘without suspecting it, passed her first exam in nursing which was to become her destiny’.3 She also had to act as an intermediary between the queen and the ministers, whom Victoria was too upset to see. In later years, Alice wondered how she and her mother came through these weeks without losing their minds.

At the time of her father’s death, Alice was already engaged to Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt. Alice’s wedding at Osborne House on 1 July 1862 was more like a funeral, with the queen in deepest black, barely able to restrain her tears and the few female guests wearing grey or violet mourning dress.

Alice arrived in the provincial, old-fashioned town of Darmstadt on 12 July 1862. She and Louis had no proper home and spent their early years of marriage in a tiny house on the Wilhelminenstrasse – it was all vastly different from the palaces of Alice’s youth. By the following spring when Alice and Louis arrived at Windsor for the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, Alice was heavily pregnant. The queen had already decreed that the child would be born in England, so it was at Windsor Castle that Princess Victoria of Hesse was born on 5 April 1863. Barely a month after the birth, Alice accompanied her mother on a visit to the wounded just back from India.

Princess Victoria’s birth was followed by that of Elisabeth (Ella) on 1 November 1864. To the disgust of the queen, who thought it unseemly for a princess, Alice breast-fed Ella herself. Comparing Alice’s behaviour to that of a cow, the queen named one of her heifers at Balmoral ‘Princess Alice’. Ella’s birth was a turning point. Alice became interested in all aspects of childcare and the workings of the human body and began to investigate how she could contribute.

In conservative Darmstadt, where it was not appropriate for women to take up social causes, Alice had to move carefully. She began by visiting the hospital in the town. ‘I want to be able to do something for it and hope to succeed, for the people have plenty of money but not the will’, she told her mother.4 The place was clean and fresh, the air in the wards was good and Alice arranged for a supply of linen to be lent to poor women for their confinements.

Alice then became patron of Wöchnerinnen (‘women in childbed’), whose members helped those in need by bringing linen and food. Accompanied by a lady-in-waiting, Alice visited the poorer parts of town to see conditions for herself. Hearing about a poor woman who had just given birth, she helped the husband to cook a meal, arranged his wife’s bed, bathed her eyes and did some other small jobs while the lady-in-waiting kept an eye on the children. Alice found it good to get away from court circles and help those less fortunate, although she was careful to keep these visits secret from the disapproving members of Darmstadt society. ‘If one never sees any poverty, and always lives in that cold circle of Court people, one’s good feelings dry up, and I felt the want of going about and doing the little good that is in my power,’ she explained to Queen Victoria.5

Alice and Louis finally moved into their own home, the newly completed Neues Palais in Darmstadt, in 1866. Although it put a severe drain on their limited financial reserves, the princess now had a permanent base for her philanthropic activities. She attended lectures, cultivated the right contacts and founded a home for the mentally handicapped. Shortly afterwards the Seven Weeks’ War broke out.

By now the Prussian Minister-President Count Otto von Bismarck was set on his policy of ‘blood and iron’ and in the summer of 1866, Prussia declared war on Austria in a bid to establish supremacy in the German confederation. Saxony, Hanover and Hesse sided with Austria and Louis was given command of the Hessian Cavalry Brigade. To Alice’s despair, she was now on the opposing side to her elder sister Vicky, the Crown Princess of Prussia. As the Prussian Army crossed Hesse’s frontier Alice sent her daughters to their grandmother in England.

Hesse was unprepared for war. Alice was expecting her third child shortly, but despite feeling tired and suffering the last uncomfortable stages of pregnancy she made bandages and stockings for the soldiers and corresponded with Florence Nightingale about the state of Hesse’s ill-equipped field hospitals. ‘Collections are already being made for the hospitals in the field and the necessary things to be got for the soldiers,’ she told Queen Victoria. ‘Illness and wounds will be dreadful in this heat.’ She was busy gathering rags, shirts and sheets and begged the queen to send some old linen. ‘Lint I have ordered from England by wish of the doctors; and bandages also they wished for. If you could, through Doctor Jenner, procure me some of these things I should be so grateful …’6

On 3 July, the Austrians suffered a heavy defeat at the battle of Königgrätz with 45,000 casualties. Vicky’s husband Fritz had played a decisive part in Prussia’s victory. There was now no longer a question of whether Prussia would emerge victorious from the war, it was just a question of how severely Bismarck would deal with the opposing side.

Louis was back in Darmstadt on a few days’ leave when Alice’s baby was born on 11 July. The town was full of Prussians, there was fighting in the streets and from her palace Alice could hear the guns firing – they named the baby Irene (‘Peace’).

A few days later the Bavarians were defeated at Aschaffenburg and as the wounded flooded into Darmstadt the military gymnasium (school) was quickly converted into an emergency hospital. On 21 July the Prussian Army marched into Darmstadt, looting the barracks and the arsenal before occupying the town.

Despite constant anxiety for Louis, who had returned to the front, as soon as she was up and about Alice became a familiar sight in the hospitals, visiting the wounded to give what comfort she could. One man had died since her last visit; another was feeling very low after an operation and ‘crying like a child. I could scarcely comfort him, he held my hand and always moaned out “it burns so”,’ she told her mother.7

When Austria was defeated, all the small German states who had sided with her were annexed by Prussia and their rulers dispossessed. Hesse-Darmstadt was one of only four German states to remain independent of Prussia, although with the loss of some territory and an enormous bill for reparations. The armistice was signed on 3 September.

In the aftermath of the war, Alice’s interest in both nursing and biological knowledge increased as the need for more humanitarian organisations became tragically clear. The next four years saw an immense amount of activity as she began to help those in greatest need by setting up societies to help pregnant women, the blind and the mentally ill. She attended lectures, often on subjects that Queen Victoria thought indelicate and far outside the scope of activities which should be undertaken by someone of Alice’s rank. Florence Nightingale now became both a friend and a major influence on Alice, who used Miss Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing, published in 1860, as a guide. Alice became vigilant in ensuring that ‘cleanliness, ventilation and water supply’ were well maintained in all the hospitals. When Miss Nightingale forwarded some money sent by English supporters of the princess, Alice added it to a fund to help those seriously injured or maimed in the war.8

The war had highlighted the need for efficient aid to the wounded on the battlefield. Nursing had previously been done by deaconesses or Sisters of Mercy from the religious orders but it was now felt that a committee should be formed to organise the training of specially qualified nurses.

With the example of Florence Nightingale before her, on 1 June 1867 Princess Alice founded the Alice-Frauenverein (Women’s Societies) to train Red Cross nurses in case of another conflict and to assist the Geneva International Convention in nursing and giving support to the troops in wartime. This would avoid the situation where untrained nurses were sent to a war zone. In Darmstadt, Alice headed a committee of six ladies and four doctors, under which was a network of local committees who would collect all the necessary things for both the wounded and the troops on the march, ensuring that everything was sent to the correct place. To recruit members, lectures were given all over the country by eminent medical men. By 1869, the number of ladies involved had risen to 2,500.9

Alice was greatly interested in the advancement of women so that they could earn their own living. In 1872, she chaired the ‘Frauentag’ (Ladies’Assembly) in Darmstadt, which discussed ‘the further employment of women, the sale of women’s handiwork, nursing, better schools for girls and how all these issues had been handled in England’. The princess also founded an orphanage, a girls’ school to train girls as clerks or to make handicrafts, a home for unmarried mothers and an asylum for the insane.10 Bazaars – a novelty in Germany at the time – were held in the palace grounds to raise money by selling needlework and handicrafts made by women. They became known as the Alice Bazaars.

Yet Alice’s main interest remained nursing. Florence Nightingale had waged an epic struggle to establish nursing as a respectable profession, ‘no longer associated in people’s minds with drunkenness and prostitution’,11 but these changes were slow to be recognised in Germany. Nevertheless, the first two nurses completed their training in January 1868 and soon ten nurses were working either in private or military hospitals supervised by experienced doctors. ‘There is a great deal to be done, and in the hospitals I have been able to get some very necessary changes made,’ Alice told Queen Victoria.12

***

In 1869, Alice spent a holiday with Vicky at the Grand Hotel in Cannes. Vicky had long been concerned with improving the care of the wounded but her life in Berlin was not easy. Her ‘English’ ways were disliked and her liberal and Anglophile views put her into conflict with Bismarck.

During Prussia’s war with Denmark in 1864, Vicky started an army nursing corps. She later gave active support to the International Congress in Aid of the Wounded, attending the Congress in 1869 and urging her mother and the British government to give their support as well. She was desperately anxious to be of use to her new country, remembering meetings with Florence Nightingale in England during the Crimean War. From her husband she had also heard about the lack of proper medical attention for soldiers at the front.

In Cannes, Alice and Vicky discussed subjects of interest to them which would have appalled their mother. One of these was anatomy, which they had been learning a little about to help with their interest in hospitals and the training of nurses. Queen Victoria thought such a subject disgusting. Alice told her that the ingenious structure and various bodily functions filled her with wonder. Furthermore, if a sudden illness occurred in her family she found it useful to know what should be done before the doctor arrived. For the queen, of course, such knowledge was unnecessary, as she was surrounded by eminent physicians. Alice’s concern was borne out when in January 1870 she nursed Louis, Victoria and baby Ernest Louis through scarlet fever.

In July 1870 both sisters found their skills needed when the Franco-Prussian War broke out. Louis was again sent to the front with his division, while Alice helped the sick and wounded as well as those left destitute by the fighting. She turned her palace into a Red Cross depot and drove there every morning from their summer residence, Kranichstein. ‘ … so much rests on me,’ she told her mother, ‘and there are so many to help – the poor forsaken soldiers’ families amongst others! I have seen that all is ready to receive the wounded, and to send out help. I sent out fourteen nurses for the Field Hospitals.’13

Darmstadt was very near the seat of war and there were still only sixteen trained nurses ready to work in the Hilfsverein, a voluntary organisation which worked in Alice’s palace to help servicemen. As huge numbers of wounded poured into Darmstadt more nurses were urgently needed. Alice now worked hard to get nursing accepted, so that women could be seen handing out refreshments to the troops at railway stations, working in hospital trains and hospital steamers, as well as in hospital wards, which would not formerly have been tolerated. Thanks to Alice’s encouragement, some of the best medical men held classes at various locations for women who wanted to nurse during the war. More women volunteered and there were soon 164 nurses available to work in reserve hospitals, field hospitals or the Hilfsverein.

Alice was soon sending nurses to the front. Conditions in the field hospitals were often primitive; with little understanding of germs, many of the wounded died of infections picked up during surgery. Doctors wandered around the battlefields wearing aprons smothered in blood and buckets of sand were used to mop up the blood on the floor of the operating room. Chloroform did not reach the battlefields until later in the century, although it was used in the main civilian hospitals (as was ether) and in some field dressing stations. The surgeon Joseph Lister’s findings on antiseptics were only published in 1867. Battlefield surgery was more or less restricted to whether, and how soon, to operate and only recently had the number of amputations decreased. The term ‘ambulance’ could be used for anything from a rickety cart carrying wounded from the battlefield, ‘to field hospitals, first aid stations’, temporary hospitals in schools or old barracks, and ‘entire self-sufficient medical units with surgeons, priests, nurses, carriages, horses and all food and medical supplies’.14

At Pont-à-Mousson in north-east France a church had been converted into a hospital and an appeal went out for 250 iron bedsteads. Thanks to the efforts of another of Alice’s sisters, Princess Helena, these arrived within forty-eight hours, conveyed by a young doctor, as Alice told Queen Victoria:

This morning we got two large wagons ready and sent off for Pont-à-Mousson, where they telegraph from the battlefield of the 16th [regiment] that they are in great want. My best nurses are out there; the others are in three hospitals: two of them – military ones – were not ready or organised when 150 wounded arrived a week ago.15

The following day Alice sent off two more wagons loaded with provisions, bandages, medicines and mattresses to bring back as many as possible of the wounded by rail. ‘My nurses reached the battlefield in time and were of great use,’ she added proudly.16 Despite the risk of infection, she then went round the hospitals and had any able-bodied men sent back to their homes in order to make room for the next batch of wounded. One day she helped lift a wounded man and it was then discovered that he had smallpox.

During the war the Alice-Frauenverein took over the running and administration of Darmstadt’s three reserve military hospitals – the Riedeselstrasse, the Pioneer Barracks and the military hospital erected by the English National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded, which was staffed with English surgeons. This 120-bed hospital was given the name of the Alice Hospital. Soon the military authorities built a further four barracks with 450 beds staffed by medical officers from England. The nurses for this, and the other military hospitals, were supplied by the Alice-Frauenverein.

Alice spent her days visiting hospitals and dressing stations, and building up a storeroom to accumulate the supplies necessary to nurse and transport the injured. The French needle gun, the Chassepot, was more capable of shattering bones than any previous gun, even though it left comparatively small wounds; nearly every hour trains brought in more wounded, who soon included many French prisoners. The state of many of them shocked Alice and she complained to Louis that it was a ‘terrible, bloody war’.17

The princess soon discovered the War Department’s inefficiency. Nothing was ready and the hospitals did not have the things they desperately needed. Two field hospitals went off without instruments and Alice could do nothing to rectify the situation. One old doctor and two of Alice’s nurses had to cope in a badly ventilated, overcrowded clinic overflowing with the sick and seriously wounded because all the young doctors had gone to the front. Alice sent much-needed supplies, more staff and partitions so a new hut could be built.

Alice lived in constant anxiety for the safety of Louis and worried about her children. When they drove out they were escorted by gendarmes to protect them from the gypsies and undesirables who followed the army. French prisoners were housed in huts on the drill ground and there was nowhere the children could walk safely without fear of infection from the sick troops who wandered around the town. At the foot of Alice’s garden was another barrack containing 1,200 French prisoners, many of whom were also sick. ‘We have over 500 wounded; as soon as they are better they will be sent north and worse ones will fill the beds,’ she explained to the queen.18 Sometimes, Alice took her eldest daughter to visit the German and French casualties, and little Victoria later recalled visiting huts in the Orangery Garden. Two wounded officers were being nursed in the Neues Palais – one had typhoid and was very ill; the other liked to show the little princess the pieces of bone from his shattered leg that he kept in a pillbox.

In Berlin, Alice’s sister was equally active. ‘A wounded man,’ Vicky said, ‘has ceased to be an enemy’, and she sent her mother a long list of requirements, begging for help. England was officially neutral but the queen agreed to provide ‘some old linen and oilcloth’ on condition that her name did not appear anywhere on the packages. Vicky was busy forming a separate staff of doctors and nurses and, although delighted that some were being sent from England, she wished they could be sent direct to her where they were very much needed. ‘I have borrowed money and given some of my jewels in trust to be able to do this,’ she added.19 Vicky’s work in Potsdam and Berlin was not appreciated by her mother-in-law Queen Augusta of Prussia, who was organising hospital services in Berlin, or by Prussian society. Her efforts were ‘contemptuously rejected, presumably on account of the anti-British feeling,’ Crown Prince Frederick recorded in his diary on 23 August, so Vicky decided to establish a model hospital in Homburg in the Taunus mountains, near the border with France.20

In early September, Vicky and Alice arrived in Homburg, where the crown princess moved into the old castle which had once been the home of George III’s daughter Landgravine Elisabeth. A large barracks had been put at Vicky’s disposal for a military hospital but it was in a disgraceful state, so was being renovated to her own requirement at her own expense. She was also having a new ‘hut’ built. The Victoria Barrack had twenty-four beds for special cases and all the latest medical equipment. ‘To overcome the prejudice of doctors and patients against fresh air is really almost impossible,’ she told her mother. ‘We have not one nurse or dresser here yet, only people from the town, who are dirty, ignorant and useless in the extreme, but we have sent for some better help …’21 Florence Nightingale sent out her friend Florence Lees to assist and soon fresh air breezed through the wards and vases of flowers were placed by the beds. Miss Lees warmly praised the crown princess’s model hospital.

Vicky also undertook several tiring journeys to inspect hospitals along the Rhine. The weather was beautiful, the scenery superb but most of the hospitals were ‘wretched, dirty and ill managed’. A few were good but the remainder were merely tolerable. Although she found that the people were ‘touchingly kind’ to the wounded, they ‘do not understand how to take care of them and are dirty beyond description,’ she explained.22 Queen Victoria, pressed to send even more supplies, provided some ‘splendid cases of old linen’. When they arrived in Homburg they were made into ‘handkerchiefs, compresses and pillowcases’, and Vicky ensured people knew that these things came from the Queen of England.23

On 6 October Alice gave birth to Frederick William (Frittie). She was so weak that Vicky, who had given birth to her seventh child Sophie in June, helped to nurse him.

By now Crown Prince Frederick had heard that his wife’s efforts were being properly appreciated, and that she was held in high esteem by the doctors, who were ‘astonished at the wide range of her knowledge’.24 He informed his father King William but the result was not what he had anticipated. After barely a month in Homburg, Vicky was informed that Queen Augusta was arriving imminently. Augusta was ‘very kind and amiable’ but a few days later the king ordered Vicky back to Berlin; it appears that her energetic efforts did not show Queen Augusta in a good light.25

Although Vicky’s actions were not appreciated in Berlin, a model of the Victoria Ward at Homburg was exhibited in Washington DC for many years, ‘as an example of the latest methods in nursing and hygiene’.26

***

The war ended in early spring but its effects lasted much longer, especially on the wounded. During January and February 1871 Alice was working in the hospital every day, as well as looking after the two patients in the Neues Palais and visiting the wives and widows of the soldiers. She was especially upset by the fate of one young man whose heartbroken father sat by the bed holding his hand. She told her mother sadly:

I would give anything to save his life; but all efforts will, I fear, be in vain. Though I have seen so many lately die hard deaths, and heard and seen the grief of many heartbroken widows and mothers, it makes my heart bleed anew in each fresh case, and curse the wickedness of war again and again.27

The queen sent a cape which Alice gave to a dying soldier, telling him it was from the Queen of England. He held it tight, refusing to part with it and died with it wrapped around him. His mother kept it as a precious relic, as it had given her son so much pleasure.

When men recovered, Alice rejoiced. In December, she reported that her patients in the palace were much better, ‘and the one who during six weeks lay at death’s door is recovering. I have seldom experienced so great a satisfaction as seeing this young man recover, and the doctors say I have been the means of saving his life.’28

Louis returned home in June 1871. He and Alice went for a holiday on the Belgian coast and by September were at Balmoral, where they found the queen suffering from a throat infection and a 6in abscess on her arm. When doctors lanced the abscess, Alice took on the duties of a nurse. ‘Dear Alice was in and out constantly, and very affectionate and kind, helping my maids in moving me,’ the queen wrote.29

Alice and Louis then went to stay with Bertie and Alexandra, the Prince and Princess of Wales, at Sandringham. Just as they were about to leave, Bertie was stricken by typhoid. ‘Papa’s dreadful illness, which I know so well,’ Alice lamented.30 Alexandra summoned Dr Gull, also accepting the queen’s suggestion of sending for Dr Jenner. Louis returned home but Alice used the experience she had gained in wartime hospitals to serve as a self-trained nurse.

On 29 November Bertie’s fever was so violent that Alexandra sent for the queen. This was her first visit to Sandringham. Led into the darkened sickroom, she could see little but could hear the rasping sound of her eldest son gasping for breath.

As the press descended on Norfolk, in order to allay public anxiety the queen returned to Windsor. She was joined by Louis, who had raced back from Darmstadt. On 8 December a telegram arrived saying the queen should come immediately. Victoria, together with other members of the royal family, reached Sandringham that evening in deep snow to find Alice and Alexandra sitting by the prince’s bed. The queen retired for the night, Alice and Alexandra remained.

Throughout this time Alexandra only left the sickroom to snatch some sleep or pray in the little church nearby. As the prince’s ravings became more wild, with all sorts of revelations bandied about, Alice ministered to him, while Alexandra was kept away to save her embarrassment. In a letter to her husband, Alexandra’s lady-in-waiting Lady Macclesfield accused Alice of being ‘meddling, jealous and mischief-making’.31 The prince hurled objects around the sickroom and explicit expressions, never uttered in royal homes, were heard. Alice took it all in her stride but Alexandra, desperate to see her husband, crawled in on all fours and Bertie felled her with a pillow.

When the crisis began Alice was probably among the first to realise that the turning point would come on 14 December, the tenth anniversary of the prince consort’s death. As the dreaded anniversary approached the country held its breath. On Friday, 13 December, the prince was weaker and Alice, white faced, told the queen there could surely be no hope. Victoria sat vigilantly by the bedside as Alice and Alexandra snatched what sleep they could. The following morning the Prince of Wales awoke and asked for a glass of ale. The crisis had passed.

The press immediately credited Princess Alice with his recovery. However, to the queen’s reaction of overwhelming relief was added the anxiety that Alexandra, rather than Alice, should be given the credit for nursing the prince through his illness. Alice returned home in the New Year, exhausted both in mind and body. ‘I still do not like leaving England before Bertie’s convalescence is more firmly established,’ she told Louis. ‘But his condition improves so slowly that I shall just have to go …’32

***

In Darmstadt, Alice’s achievements were reaching their climax, although some of her ideas did not meet with approval. During a meeting regarding the building of a block of flats for workers, Alice expressed the view that there should be a communal bathroom on each floor. This notion of maintaining personal cleanliness was looked upon as very English and was therefore unwanted in Hesse. One irate elderly man said that he had never had a bath in his life.

Alice’s own hospital was nearing completion and would function as a nurses’ training school and a home for probationers who had completed their training. After the Franco-Prussian War, the small provisional Alice Hospital erected and run by the English National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded was taken over by the Hessian authorities. All the furniture and equipment was left to the Alice-Frauenverein for its own small hospital, which was staffed by a small body of doctors in Darmstadt. This new Alice Hospital had begun modestly in a small house at 17 Mauer-Strasse and was now completely reorganised by the Alice-Frauenverein, with additional buildings and a total reorganisation of the interior. Later, it was separated from the Frauenverein and supplementary funds were made available. In their correspondence, Florence Nightingale gave Alice her opinion on subjects such as discipline and the length of training required for nurses, saying that the Nightingale Committee would be willing to train probationers for Alice’s hospital in Darmstadt, ‘if satisfied that a really useful result would be attained’.33 The women would, of course, need to understand English. Alice paid for the training of the first matron of the new hospital, Charlotte Helmsdorfer, in Leipzig and Liverpool, where she studied at Miss Merryweather’s institution to gain experience in district nursing. Alice also arranged with Miss Nightingale that Miss Helmsdorfer would train at the Nightingale School at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, from January 1873. The Alice Hospital remained a project very dear to the princess’s heart.

***

Alice had given birth to her sixth child Alix on 6 June 1872. The family now suffered a series of tragedies which would ultimately lead to Alice’s own early death. On 29 May 1873 her 3-year-old son Frittie slipped and fell through an open window while playing with his elder brother Ernest Louis. He landed on a stone balustrade on the terrace 20ft below, where he was picked up unconscious and bleeding. Frittie suffered from haemophilia and by the evening he was dead. Queen Victoria’s youngest son Leopold also suffered from this malady and two of her daughters – Alice and Beatrice – were carriers. In later years when their own daughters carried haemophilia into the royal families of Russia and Spain there would be disastrous consequences. Alice never recovered from the loss of her son and even the birth of Marie (‘May’) the following year did not heal the gaping wound.

In March 1877, Louis’ father Prince Charles of Hesse died, followed three months later by the Grand Duke of Hesse. Alice’s husband now succeeded his uncle as Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine. As the Grand Duchess of Hesse, Alice’s official duties increased and this, together with the good works that she was already involved in, proved tiring. ‘Too much is demanded of one; and I have to do with so many things,’ she told Queen Victoria. ‘It is more than my strength can stand.’34

By the following year Alice’s health was causing concern and Queen Victoria sent the whole family to Eastbourne for the summer at her own expense so that she could recuperate. Even here Alice could not relax. She visited the sick in the fishermen’s cottages, called at many homes and penitentiaries for poor women and girls, inspected the hospitals and opened charity bazaars. She also visited the Albion Home for Girls (many of them reformed prostitutes) in Brighton and agreed to become its patron. Alice was slowly wearing herself out.

Back in Darmstadt she devoted herself to her various charitable causes with renewed energy, but by the beginning of November she was again weary and incapacitated. Alice told the queen she was still ‘leading a very quiet life, which is an absolute necessity. It is so depressing to be like this …’35

On 8 November, 15-year-old Princess Victoria complained of a sore throat. The next day doctors diagnosed diphtheria, a highly contagious disease of which Alice had a particular dread. Helped by Miss Macbean (who was standing in for the lady-in-waiting, who was on leave) and the nurses and lady superintendent of her hospital, Alice immediately took charge of the nursing arrangements.

Although Victoria was immediately isolated from the family, by the following week 6-year-old Alix had the disease. ‘I … looked into her throat, and there were not only spots, but a thick covering on each side of her throat of that horrid white membrane,’ Alice told the queen. ‘I got the steam inhaler, with chlorate of potash for her at once, but she was very unhappy, poor little thing.’36 Dr Eigenbrodt immediately had Alix moved upstairs near Victoria. Meanwhile, Alice fumigated the nursery to stop the disease spreading and the queen sent her personal physician Sir William Jenner to Darmstadt.

During the next few days 4-year-old May, Irene, Ernie and even Louis all went down with diphtheria. Only Ella escaped. She was sent to her paternal grandmother Princess Charles of Hesse, away from the risk of infection. ‘Well Katie,’ Alice said to Miss Macbean, ‘you and I are the only ones who are not ill, and we must not be ill, there is so much to be done and seen to.’37 As the doctors tried to keep up with her demanding schedule, Alice went from room to room, soothing, comforting and doing everything she could for her family.

In between nursing her husband and children, Alice sent regular updates to Queen Victoria. Gradually they began to recover, except for May whose fever remained very high. Early on 16 November Alice was woken by the doctors, who reported that a piece of membrane had crossed May’s throat. Alice rushed to her daughter’s side but it was too late. Her beloved, adored little May had choked to death.

With Louis sufficiently recovered to be told the tragic news, Alice now had the difficult task of concealing May’s death from the other children, who constantly asked after her and wanted to send her their books and toys. Even the funeral was held in secret so as not to alert them. Although Victoria and Alix were out of danger, Ernie’s life was still in peril. A few days later Ernie was out of danger and he gave Alice a book, asking her to give it to May. The effort of concealing the truth was almost too much for the poor mother.

At the beginning of December Alice steeled herself to tell Ernie that his sister was dead. He at first refused to believe it and as the tears streamed down his face Alice now did the worst possible thing. Breaking the doctors’ instructions that there should be no contact between her and the patients, she bent over and kissed him. It was the kiss of death.

On 7 December she wrote her last letter to Queen Victoria, saying they would go to Heidelberg for a few days while the sickrooms were aired and repapered. A few days later she complained of feeling ill and on the following day the dreaded symptoms appeared.

From the beginning her fever was high and Alice, worn out from the recent strain of nursing her family, was unable to fight it. On Saturday, 14 December 1878, the exact anniversary of the prince consort’s death seventeen years earlier, Alice died. She was 35 years old. Her last words were ‘Dear Papa …’38

Her death was an irreparable loss, not only to her husband and children but to the people of Darmstadt where she was greatly mourned. ‘She had a warm heart for all necessity’, wrote Louis’ cousin Princess Marie of Erbach-Schönberg. ‘She knew how to initiate schemes for the general welfare in the most practical fashion.’39

The people of Eastbourne, where Alice had gone to recover her strength in the autumn of 1878, wanted to raise a memorial. So much money poured in that they decided to build a small hospital. The foundation stone was laid by Princess Helena in 1882 and the Princess Alice Memorial Hospital was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in June 1883.

Princess Alice achieved so much for nurses and nursing during her short life. Writing to Florence Nightingale in 1872, the princess said that if she had remained single, then nursing ‘is the calling I should have most liked to follow’.40

For the moment the flame would continue to burn brightly in the actions of her sister Helena, but in the years to come Alice’s daughters and granddaughters would be among the many other royal ladies who made their own contribution to nursing.

Notes

1. Frances Dimond & Roger Taylor, Crown & Camera (Penguin Books, 1987), p.38.

2. Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p.436.

3. Prince Louis of Hesse, ‘The Alice Hospital’, lecture 1953. Quoted in Gerard Noel, Princess Alice: Queen Victoria’s Forgotten Daughter (Constable, 1974), p.79.

4. Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Biographical Sketch and Letters, 21 September 1863, p.61.

5. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 5 March 1864, p.69.

6. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 24 June 1866, p.134.

7. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 17 August 1866, p.144.

8. Noel, Gerard, Princess Alice: Queen Victoria’s Forgotten Daughter (Constable, 1974) p.133.

9. The Alice-Frauenverein merged with the German Red Cross in 1937.

10. Miller, Ilana D., The Four Graces: Queen Victoria’s Hessian Granddaughters (Kensington House Books, California, 2011), p.14.

11. Noel, Alice, p.142.

12. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 25 June 1870, p.241.

13. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 26 July 1870, p.243.

14. Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream, p.67.

15. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 19 August 1870, p.245.

16. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 25 August 1870, p.248.

17. Noel, Alice, p.162.

18. Nina Epton, Victoria and her Daughters (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), p.128.

19. Hannah Pakula, An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), p.283.

20. Sir Frederick Ponsonby, Letters of the Empress Frederick (Macmillan, 1929), p.89.

21. Ponsonby, Letters, p.94.

22. Ponsonby, Letters, pp.96, 91.

23. Pakula, Uncommon Woman, p.284.

24. Ponsonby, Letters, p.94.

25. Pakula, Uncommon Woman, p.285. In January 1871 the German Empire was proclaimed and King William I of Prussia became Emperor William I of Germany.

26. Roger Fulford, Your Dear Letter (Evans Brothers, 1971), p.286.

27. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 12 November 1870, p.252.

28. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 19 December 1870, p.255.

29. Epton, Victoria, p.137

30. Noel, Alice, p.171.

31. Noel, Alice, p.173.

32. Noel, Alice, p.174.

33. Noel, Alice, p.254. Memo of 23 March 1872.

34. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 30 October 1877, p.359.

35. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 6 November 1878, p.367.

36. Alice, Biographical Sketch, 12 November 1878, p.368.

37. Noel, Alice, p.236.

38. Alice, Biographical Sketch, p.276.

39. Princess of Battenburg, Marie zu Erbach-Schönberg, Reminiscences (The Ipswich Book Company, 1925. Reprinted by Royalty Digest, 1996), p.178.

40. Noel, p.249.