"Tradition and transformation": Recent scholarship in Canadian nursing history

Journal of Canadian Studies, Fall 1999 by Quiney, Linda

The Cistercian Abbey of Royaumont, near Paris, was a voluntary hospital during the First World War, funded and supported by the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service (SWH), a branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies; it was administered and operated entirely by women. A retired physician without previous experience in historical scholarship, Dr Crofton has produced a sound study of this singular achievement. The book first explains the development and functioning of the hospital from 1914 to 1919, then presents a biographical survey of notable staff members. Anecdotal material was gleaned from interviews with family members of Royaumont staff, as well as from diaries and letters of former staff, the hospital records, and newsletters from the post-war Royaumont Association.

Snubbed by Britain's War Office when they offered to provide a voluntary hospital, the SWH offer was readily accepted by France. Medical and nursing volunteers with a knowledge of French were particularly welcomed by Royaumont administrators; consequently, Marjorie Starr of Montreal came to Royaumont in September 1915 as a young orderly, or a volunteer nurse's aid, otherwise known as a VAD or Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Canada and Britain, and stayed until January 1916. Her diary of her stay is among the most vivid of the personal accounts cited in the book. Another Canadian, Dr Edna May Guest of Ontario, worked briefly at Royaumont from June to August, 1918, after seven months' service in another SWH Hospital in Corsica. After the war, Dr Guest was renowned in Canada for her work in preventative medicine and women's health, becoming the first woman to be elected to the Academy of Medicine in Toronto. She was also noted for her promotion of women's ambitions in the medical profession, politics, and public service. Crofton also discusses the 100-bed "Canada Ward" established in the old monks' refectory at Royaumont, funded by the Canadian Red Cross Society, and boasting an enormous Canadian flag hung at one end.

Crofton's analysis of the Royaumont experience is well defined and carefully considered, competently handling issues of gender, race and class. Most of the patients were the French poilus, privates in the French army, including many from French Colonial Africa, while the all-female staff ranged from titled British women serving as orderlies to local French villagers doing sewing or kitchen work. Crofton recognises the professional tensions, including the resentments of the trained nurses who saw unqualified orderlies undermining their authority and status; she questions the apparent insensitivity of Dr Frances Ivens, chief physician and commandant, who disregarded the nurses' concerns, despite her otherwise active promotion of the rights and ambitions of medical women. Although Women of Royaumont does not qualify as a Canadian study, it describes a wartime experience in which Canadian women were actively involved, and offers a small addition to the much neglected history of Canadian women's medical and nursing contributions to the Great War.