{"id":3413,"date":"2021-08-20T10:37:56","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T10:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/?p=3413"},"modified":"2025-12-17T15:14:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T15:14:02","slug":"people-dont-know-about-them-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/2021\/08\/20\/people-dont-know-about-them-3\/","title":{"rendered":"“People don’t know about them…”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The story of Dr Ruth Nicholson and the women of Royaumont Military Hospital<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Panel on the Royaumont women in the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry, stitched by Andrea Cooley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is an online version of the exhibition\u00a0People don\u2019t know about them\u2026<\/em><\/strong>, which was on display\u00a0in the Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms, Newcastle University, 28th October 2016 \u2013 15th January 2017.\u00a0 The exhibition was the result of a collaborative oral history project based at Newcastle University Library, and part of the Universities at War programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many thanks to the creators of the original exhibition, Sam Wagner and Rosemary Nicholson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Women<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our story starts with Rosemary Nicholson, a local Newcastle woman who contacted the Universities at War<\/em> project to tell us about her husband\u2019s aunt Ruth \u2013 a Newcastle University medical graduate who had worked as a surgeon in a military hospital in France throughout the First World War, under the direction of the French Red Cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A female medical graduate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A military hospital staffed entirely by women?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And why the French<\/em> Red Cross?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story caught the eye of Sam Wagner, an archaeology student in her final year of study at Newcastle University, who had joined the Universities at War project in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Ruth Nicholson, Rosemary Nicholson and Sam Wagner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sam\u2019s exhibition is the result of her own historical research and interviews with Rosemary – capturing her memories of family stories about Ruth, as told through Ruth\u2019s sister, Alison, who was still alive when Rosemary married into the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the fascinating story of an amazing Newcastle woman, whose story had been almost forgotten – passed on by the women in her family who had never forgotten and who wanted her story to be told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The College of Medicine – Newcastle upon Tyne<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ruth Nicholson completed her high school education at Newcastle upon Tyne High School and registered as a student at the College of Medicine in 1904.\u00a0 After graduating in 1911 she worked in a dispensary in Newcastle before going to Edinburgh where she became an assistant to Dr Elsie Inglis in the Bruntsfield Hospital.\u00a0 As Rosemary states, she then worked in Palestine before returning to England at the outbreak of the First World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ruth (seated far left) with her brother and five sisters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were seven of them all together, one brother and Ruth the eldest.\u00a0 This was taken at Newton Vicarage where they lived later on in their father\u2019s life. Their father was a vicar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Their mother was rather a remarkable woman I think for her time because she wanted all her children to get professional qualifications regardless of whether they were men or women \u2026 So Ruth qualified as a doctor in Newcastle, and then the youngest, Wyn, also qualified as a doctor.\u00a0 The only one who didn\u2019t get special qualifications is Alison. She was always rather a joke in the family. She had a lover in Romania and that\u2019s what distracted her!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Ruth\u2019s Graduation photograph, 1909.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat picture\u2019s Ruth in 1909 when she qualified \u2026 she qualified as the only woman in her year.\u00a0 And I think that she probably was quite a convinced suffragette. I don\u2019t know whether she was a suffragette or a suffragist but you know Newcastle was a centre for a quite militant suffragette movement \u2026 Newcastle had some quite militant women!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It was quite difficult I think for women to get work as doctors in England. She went to work briefly in Edinburgh with a very distinguished woman doctor called Elsie Ingles and then she went to work out in Palestine in Gaza, which was before the First World War.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The start of the First World War<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then 1914, obviously the First World War is declared and she came back to England, and she\u2019d been working as a surgeon. She offered her services to the War Office and the War Office accepted her and said yes and then she got her kit together and turned up at Victoria Station in London to join her group to go out to France to the military hospital out in France and the doctor in charge said \u201cI\u2019m not having a woman. I\u2019m not taking her\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So she was very, well according to the family, she was terribly terribly angry and upset. And she went back to Elsie Inglis in Edinburgh \u2026 she\u2019d [Inglis] started a 100-bed hospital entirely with women, it was called the Scottish Women\u2019s Hospital and she had also offered her 100-bed hospital to the War Office but the War Office said – I\u2019ve forgotten what it is exactly they said – something like \u201cGo home and sit down\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t like that!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Elsie Inglis, image kindly provided by the Imperial War Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rosemary\u2019s family stories appear to be entirely correct. \u00a0Research by the National Archives confirms that Inglis was told by an official \u201cMy good lady, go home and sit still\u201d. \u00a0In her 1928 book, The Cause<\/em>, Ray Strachey found evidence of accounts that suggested the commanding officers had told Inglis they \u201cdid not want to be troubled with hysterical women\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hospital at Royaumont<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201c So they offered the hospital to the French in London – the French Ambassador and he said \u201cyes please\u201d the French would like them, because apparently the French, this is again just through the family myth probably, the French were very aware of the deficiencies in their medical services and they were worried when the war was declared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The president of the [French] Red Cross found them Royaumont, but Royaumont, the abbey hadn\u2019t been inhabited for quite a long time; been used as stables and it had no, I don\u2019t think it had electricity and it didn\u2019t have any lifts, which they found really really difficult for dealing with stretchers and trolleys and things like that when they opened the abbey.\u00a0 The abbey was full of nuns, they were kind of helping out, but it was an empty shell of a building and it was in a terrible state. So, quite how they managed to get it open by 1915, I don\u2019t know what they did.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Royaumont Hospital, image kindly provided by the Imperial War Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Royaumont was the largest continuously-operating voluntary hospital in France at the end of the First World War – over 10,000 patients were treated at Royaumont and its mortality rates were better than its army-run equivalents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Frances Ivens at Royaumont, by Norah Neilson Gray, image kindly provided by the Imperial War Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Royaumont \u2013 by Norah Neilson Gray, image kindly provided by Helensburgh Public Library.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201c They started with 100 beds and by the end or at some stage, they had 600 beds. You probably know that, and some of the wards had 100 beds in them… I mean, I just don\u2019t know how they coped, I don\u2019t know how they did it\u2026They were tough, I think, really tough.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201c Unfortunately, I never met Ruth because she lived in Devon and she died in 1963, and my husband and I got married in 1962 and I never met her\u2026 but I knew Alison because she lived locally [Ruth\u2019s sister Alison had also served in the Royaumont hospital, as an orderly, from September 1916 \u2013 March 1919]. \u00a0I knew her quite well. And she used to talk about it all – they went on having Royaumont reunions right on until the sixties, the middle sixties, you know, which is a long time, you know\u2026 She talked about how traumatised people were, nightmares, they continued to have nightmares about it and things.\u00a0 And the doctors too, I think.\u00a0 I think it must have been awful. Really awful.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201c I make it sound all gloom \u2026 but obviously in the First World War they had times of terrible crisis and awful fighting and then other lulls and really not much happening.\u00a0 And apparently, the nursing staff and the doctors, I supposed they were very used at home to providing their own entertainment and things and they would put on shows \u2026 Well Ruth, apparently had learnt how to do, while she\u2019d been in Palestine, Dervish Dances, I think she called them her scarf dances!\u00a0 I think the patients liked them a lot!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Scottish Women\u2019s Hospitals depended on an extensive network of fundraising, much coming from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) whose London units provided an x-ray van. \u00a0Newnham and Girton colleges in Cambridge provided both money and volunteers, as did women in the USA and around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frances Ivens was the first foreign-born woman to be awarded the Legion d\u2019Honneur, France\u2019s highest honour, and thirty of her Royaumont colleagues were awarded the Croix de Guerre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ruth (standing far left) and Frances Ivens (seated) receiving their Croix de Guerre medal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Frances Ivens, image kindly provided by the Imperial War Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201c And then at the end of the war, these are some of the doctors who got French medals. They got the French Criox de Guerre. This is Frances Ivens \u2026 she was the first non-French person ever to get the Legion d\u2019Honneur.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201c There were two surgeons, Ruth of course, second in command of the hospital I think they called her, and the boss was called Frances Ivens. She was \u2026 the rather inspirational woman in charge \u2026 I think it\u2019s incredible that quite a lot of the women who came out to be ambulance drivers actually brought their own cars, and had them slightly transformed I think! So, quite a lot of quite rich, I think, young women who could provide their own vehicles. \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After the War<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After the war Ruth specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology and became Gynaecological Surgeon and Clinical Lecturer at the University of Liverpool and was one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She became the first woman President of the North of England Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and played a prominent part in the Medical Women\u2019s Federation. Dr Ruth Nicholson died in Exeter on 18 July 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Staff of Royaumont, Francis Ivens is Centre, with Ruth to her right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ruth\u2019s sister, Alison Nicholson, who went to the Royaumont Hospital in 1916 to serve as a nurse.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201c I felt she never got the credit she should have had, or the recognition she should have had, or Alison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

People don\u2019t know about them, I mean I write to everybody. I heard the programme on Women\u2019s Hour about the women\u2019s hospital in London and I rang right in to them saying, you know, \u201cWhat about Royaumont?!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It was a matter of pride!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Ruth later in life, thought by her family to have been taken when she lived in Liverpool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of Dr Ruth Nicholson and the women of Royaumont Military Hospital This is an online version of the exhibition\u00a0People don\u2019t know about them\u2026, which was on display\u00a0in the Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms, Newcastle University, 28th October 2016 \u2013 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[852,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-for-everyone","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3415,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions\/3415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}