•*• fcrS IT i. 1 1 - | j & * The Islands Florence Nightingale' n unexpected storm darkens the She was born on the Island and was Awater and lights up the sky over By Boyde Beck and never out of it in all her life! Many Charlottetown Harbour. On the deck of Adele Townshend people here are in the same position the Rocky Point ferry a young boy and are, notwithstanding, amazingly stands beside the chair of an elderly civilized. Mrs. Pope has a governess woman. He is holding her hand. She has for her children, beautiful grounds for asked him to do so, confessing she is their recreation and a capital library. afraid of thunder and lightening. Ironic Georgina was the second youngest that this brave woman, a nurse who of eight children in this typically upper served in two major wars, should be middle class Victorian family. An intelli- afraid of a summer storm. But maybe gent outsider, using the measures of not. Perhaps it is a measure of the price their time, could have forecast the her career has exacted. The flash of probable path her life would take. A lightning and roll of thunder may have young woman of her standing could brought too many memories of another look forward to a certain amount of summer — this one in Flanders — schooling, then marriage to a gentle- when the Great War had added her to man of equal or (hopefully) slightly its tally of casualties. Her passing timid- superior social status. After marriage, ness belies the life she has led. she would devote most of her time to managing her household and bringing up her (hopefully numerous) offspring. The Silver Spoon Spare time and excess energy could be spent on church activities, suitable Cecily Jane Georgina Fane Pope was charities, and the genteel entertain- born on New Year's Day, 1862. Her ments available to those of her stand- upbringing was that of a proper ing. In time, she would help her chil- Victorian lady — one born to a family dren make marriages as proper as her of wealth and distinction. Her father The Popes made their home at own, and look forward to an old age was the Honourable William Henry Ardgowan, one of Charlottetown's most surrounded by respectful grandchil- Pope, one of the most powerful men exquisite estates. "We lived about a dren. Adventure or a professional on Prince Edward Island. A jurist, land mile out of town," recalled brother career did not figure in these estimates. agent and publisher, Pope was also a Joseph in his memoirs, "in a house sur- As with her mother, all that Victorian political manupulator of legendary abil- rounded by grounds laid out with a society would expect or demand of ity and ruthlessness. In the decades good deal of taste by my father, who Georgina Pope was a life in which she just before Confederation, William delighted in landscape gardening. We achieved: "a governess for her chil- Henry Pope was one of the key leaders had a manservant, who with his family dren, beautiful of the Island's occupied a cottage on the grounds, and grounds for their political elite two or three domestics." In 1864, dur- recreation and a — an individ- ing a lull in the Charlottetown capital library." ual to be Conference, George Brown of Upper Who could have feared and Canada described the household: guessed that her reckoned with. Mrs. Pope [Helen DesbrisayJ is a life would take Pope named her, among other "Georgie" after very plain person with a large family of strong, vigorous, intelligent and good places, to a hospi- one of his dis- tal less than fif- tinguished looking children — eight of them all steps and stairs, kicking up a precious teen miles from clients., Lady the bloodiest bat- Fane, the ab- row occasionally. Her grandfather was Governor of the Island, and she is relat- tlefield in the his- sentee propri- tory of war? etor of Lot 29. ed to all the old families upon it.

feiE: c ,J: ?p: CiML was "expected." Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. After 15 In the 1870s, for years of study and work in the United instance, three of States, Georgina Pope was approach- them, Joseph ing a pinnacle in her career. There was and Georgina in- obviously a great demand for adminis- cluded, convert- trators of her calibre. It is apparent ed to Roman that prominent positions were hers for Catholicism. Not the asking. It is also apparent that she an unusual step, was somehow dissatisfied. She had until you consid- met every challenge set her; in 1899 er that their she decided to set one for herself. father was a founding mem- Ardgowan, Pope's childhood home, from a photograph taken inbe r of the Or- South Africa the 1880s. ange Lodge in Charlottetown, It is not known whether it was a sense and was known of patriotism or adventure that brought To be fair, there were early indica- as the most creative Catholic-baiter of Georgina Pope back to Canada. Like so tions that the financial status of the his era. Sometime after her father's many of her compatriots, it was proba- Pope family was not as solid as it death, Georgina made another decision bly a blend of both. The rumour of war appeared. As Joseph remembered, their that departed sharply from her society's between Great Britain and the Boer father was "an excellent guide, council- norms. She would leave the Island. republics of South Africa hung in the lor and friend to many, but a poor judge Indeed, she would leave the country. air, and many Canadians were delight- of his own affairs, while his natural ten- She would pursue, not a marriage but a ed at the prospect. dency to some form of extravagance career. She would be a nurse. It was an era of willful innocence in (he must always have for those dear to It must be remembered that in the attitudes toward war. Preferred descrip- him the best of everything, whether he 1880s nursing had been considered a tions of battle included the poetry of could afford it or not) involved him in "respectable" occupation for only a Rudyard Kipling and exciting, sanitized financial difficulties from which he couple of decades. Nurses, like doc- descriptions in papers like the could never extricate himself." By 1870, tors, were struggling to be recognized Illustrated London News. War was con- the year of Joseph's 16th birthday, "the as true professionals. Training stan- sidered a proving ground, for nations state of my father's finances compelled dards varied widely, as did conditions as well as individuals. Topics like death me to set about earning my own living." in the workplace. Georgina's choice of and dismemberment were only rarely He embarked on a career that, at its training schools demonstrated a deter- brought up, and then only by socialists, peak, would see him regarded as the mination to go as far as she could in pacifists and other such "lunatics and most powerful civil servant in Ottawa. this fledgling profession. However, the economic chaos of the Bellevue Hospital in New York was 1870s continued to batter his father's known as "The Mother of Nursing fortune. In 1879, at the age of 54, Schools in North America." After grad- William Henry died of a stroke: "leaving uating from its programme in 1885, my mother and six sisters in straitened Nurse Pope took a job in charge of a circumstances...." Joseph recalled, private hospital in Washington, D.C. "largely dependent upon my care." Sometime later she moved to that city's Columbia Hospital for Women. Here she began to develop her impres- Nurse Pope sive capacity for organization, adminis- tration, and sheer hard work. As well Victorian society had an alternate life as being the Superintendent of plan for young ladies who had fallen Nursing, she was asked to found a into straightened circumstances. It still school of nursing. Five years later the hinged on making a proper marriage, school was up and running, but Pope but recommended casting further had paid what would become a famil- down the social ranks for prospective iar price. Exhausted by the strain and candidates. If needed, the young long hours, her health collapsed. She woman could take a job, but only a resigned from the hospital and went respectable one (like teaching) and back to New York for a year of post- then only until a husband could be graduate work at Bellevue. Shortly found. Adventure and careers were still after this additional training, she won frowned upon. Society still expected a another position — this time in charge life centered on home and children. of the nursing staff at St. John's The Pope children, however, had already demonstrated a streak of inde- Georgina Fane Pope in nurse's garb, in pendence that flew in the face of what the years before the Boer War. misfits." When war came in 1899, female nurses in Britain extended a call to arms to its base and gener- overseas dominions.* In Canada, thou- al hospitals, but sands of militiamen and other hopeful not in units soldiers clamoured for a place in the close enough to 1000-man strong Canadian Contingent. the enemy to be In addition to this infantry force, the shot at. Since Militia Department also decided to the British com- send a small medical contingent of mand had al- three doctors and four nurses. ready staffed a Georgina Pope was on this muster list. Base Hospital in Though the fact that she was sister Cape Town, it to the powerful Joseph Pope probably sent Pope and did not hurt her application, Georgina her small force Pope was undoubtedly selected on to a General merit. In addition to riflemen, the Hospital eight Canadian Contingent needed experi- miles away in a Minnie Affleck, one of the four nurses in Pope's South African enced medical professionals. Prior to small town party, poses with a group of wounded soldiers. the late 1800s, there had been little named Wyn- scope for medicine in warfare. berg. Here she Comparative levels of medical and mil- took command of the seven nurses pro- were literally "cleaner" than those itary technologies meant that if a vided for the 600-bed hospital. They delivered by firearms in other wars. wound was serious, it was fatal. But by would soon be very busy. The arid air of southern Africa was also the 1890s, it was apparent that medical It was just before Christmas, 1899. credited with lowering the rate of infec- treatment on or near the battlefield The press would quickly dub it "Black tion that often accompanied gunshot could save lives. Thus, the Canadian Week." In a series of three engage- wounds. As the medical journals joked, Army was trying to incorporate med- ments British forces were badly it wasn't a bad war at all to be shot in. If ical services into its formal chain of mauled by their Boer opponents. For you were not killed immediately, you command and regulations. Though it the British Army it was a reminder stood an excellent chance of surviving had a British model — the Royal Army that the Boers were not to be taken a wound that, in previous wars, would Medical Corps — to work from, the lightly. For the British and Canadian have been hopeless. war in South Africa caught the publics, it was a lesson that war was Canadians at the outset of this reform. not all Kipling and cavalry charges. They would have to improvise as they For Pope and her nurses, it was their Nursing Tommy A^kens' went along. first experience with battle casualties. On landing in Cape Town, Nurse Theory held that a battle would As the rush of wounded from Black Pope was named superintendant of the yield three types of wounded. The very Week eased, Pope's nurses were trans- Canadian nursing staff. "We disem- badly wounded would probably die on ferred to Number 3 General Hospital, at barked on December 1," she reported, or near the battlefield. The lightly that time stationed a few miles away in "and upon finding that our troops had wounded would get all the treatment Rondesbosch. "We arrived on Christ- orders to proceed upcountry immedi- they needed at the field hospital and mas Day and remained almost six ately, made every effort to be allowed be returned to duty. In the middle months, having at times very active ser- to accompany them to the front. This would be those requiring more care vice, sometimes covered with sand dur- we were told was impossible. . . ." At than a field hospital could give, but ing a 'Cape south-easter/ at others del- the outset of the war, female nurses in with a fair chance of surviving if they uged with a forerunner of the coming South Africa were not allowed near the could be brought to a more sophisti- rainy season, and at all times in terror of battlefront. The Medical Corps had a cated facility. These were the men scorpions and snakes as bedfellows." chain of ambulance units, first aid sta- who would rely on the care of nurses At Number 3 General Hospital Pope tions, and field hospitals designed to like Georgina Pope: 'We received our was in charge of the enteric fever get a wounded soldier as far from the first convoy of wounded a few days ward. "Enteric fever" was a catch-all battlefield as fast as the severity of his after the battles of Magersfontien and phrase that covered the gastrointesti- wound would allow. Once out of imme- Modder River, when our beds were nal infections that resulted from eating diate danger, the wounded were filled with the men of the Highland bad food, marching till exhaustion, moved further to the rear, to a general brigade who had suffered so severely and drinking polluted water. The "fly- or base hospital. As an army advanced, at the former place." ing-column" offensives favoured by the this chain was moved forward. The medical service was able to British command after the Black Medical Corps doctrine allowed achieve an unprecedented rate of Week disasters — a series of light- recovery among those it treated during ning-quick thrusts that advanced faster the Boer War. That conflict was a rare than supplies could keep up — were *For the Island's part in this undertaking, see instance where the ability of medicine perfect recipes for enteric epidemics. "Islanders and the Boer War," by Darin MacKinnon and Boyde Beck, in Number to heal wounds was greater than the The British forces buried 20,000 men 26(Fall-Winterl989). capability of weapons to inflict them. in the course of the South African War; High velocity rifles caused wounds that 14,000 were killed by enteric fever. The worst outbreak of the disease Unfortunately, the country's mili- began in March 1900. Late in February tary medical structure had not evolved the main Boer army was defeated at to the point where it could employ a the Battle of Paardeberg. Though they permanent nursing staff — even a had succeeded in destroying their ene- highly decorated one. The next sever- mies' formal military structure, the vic- al years would be ones of inactivity as torious British had left most of their Georgina Pope waited for her chosen supplies behind. Pausing to rest at a field to catch up to her abilities. small town named Bloemfontein, they It is not known how she filled her began to fall ill. First hundreds, then time during these years. She remained thousands succumbed to enteric fever. active in the militia, but even active The British command scrambled to members were required to muster bring supplies and medical facilities only a few times per year. She had a forward. Breaking its rule of keeping small annuity from her father's estate, female personnel far to the rear, the and on this lived quietly, apparently in Medical Corps decided to move sever- Summerside. In 1904 the Department al General Hospitals closer to the of Militia created an Army Medical front. Pope was moved to Kroonstadt, Corps, and in 1906 the Corps estab- a posting very close to the battlefront. lished a permanent Nursing Branch. Here she and her nurses got to experi- Technically, Pope and her Canadian Georgina Pope was one of the first ence field conditions: nurses were only to nurse Canadian women hired. She would devote much troops in South Africa, but once on the of the next decade to creating the pro- Under canvas in June we suffered scene, that regulation was ignored. fession of military nursing in Canada. acutely from cold, each morning the Nevertheless, it is unlikely Pope ever got hoar frost being thick both inside and to nurse any of the Island wounded, out of our single bell tents. We were such as Nelson T. Brace. From Annie The Army Nursing Service very short of water and lived on B. Mellish, Our Boys Under Fire rations which an orderly cooked for us (Charlottetown, 1900). Military nursing was quite different on a fire on the veldt, dinner being a from its civilian counterpart, stressed very uncertain feast on a rainy day. fellow, always grateful, always cheer- officials in the Medical Corps. As Around our camps within 50 yards ful, bearing loss of limb, loss of health Colonel Guy Carleton Jones sternly were several six-inch guns, while we and many minor discomforts with a warned: "Active service work is had prepared in a donga, a place of fortitude that satisfied our best ideas extremely severe. A very large propor- safety for helpless patients, and a of British pluck, while his considera- tion of regular nurses are totally unfit bomb-proof shelter for all the hospital tion for the presence of the Sister' was physically and mentally for it." It was staff in case of attack, which for some at times quite touching." the job of Matron Pope to produce a time threatened us daily. . . . Several Pope had evidently found military corps of nurses able to handle the mornings we wakened to hear the life to her liking. She did not return to rigours of active service if the need boom of guns, which, however, were her established civilian career, but arose. In 1908 she was promoted head never near enough to necessitate our stayed on the Active Militia list. of the Nursing Service. Stationed in using the shelters. In early 1902 Pope was back in the Halifax, she supervised a permanent By July the crisis had passed. field in South Africa. Although the staff of five and a reserve that ranged As the end of their one-year term of Boer's formal military strength had from 25-80 members. service neared, the British command been broken in the spring of 1900, Though not as exciting as service in decided to give Pope and her they continued to fight in small gueril- the field, the peacetime routine of the Canadian nurses a break from their la units. London appealed for another small permanent army was quite busy. duties. They were transferred to Canadian Contingent. Pope at first did Aside from managing the nurses at the Pretoria, capital of the now-occupied not appear on the roster; the authori- garrison hospital, Chief Matron Pope Boer Republic. Attached to the Palace ties were not aware of her desire to was also responsible for training two of Justice Hospital, their duties were return to action. After some hurried annual classes of reservists. The apparently light, and when their term consultation, which included her Militia Department acknowledged the of service was over they were given brother Joseph, her name was added importance of their role. The Canadian permission to tour most of the war's to the list. Pope's second tour of duty Army was the first in the world to major battlefields. On New Year's Eve was much shorter than her first. She grant officer status to its nursing they embarked for Canada. By mid- was assigned to a Stationary Hospital branch. If called to active service, the January 1901 they were home. in mid-March, but the war was over by graduates of Georgina Pope's training While in transit, Nurse Pope wrote June, and by late July she was back in courses were to be treated as part of the official report on their year in Canada again. She was now the most the regular military — subject to its South Africa. It stressed adventure, experienced military nurse in the regulations and discipline with a rank duty, and the many kind people the country. In 1903 her service in South equivalent to a lieutenant. Canadian nurses had encountered. Africa was rewarded with a Royal Red As Prime Minister Laurier once "Tommy Aitkens,'" Pope concluded, Cross medal — the first ever awarded declared: "When Great Britain is at "we found a very good patient and fine to a Canadian. war, Canada is at war. There is no dis- tinction." By the middle Pope arrived at the of August 1914, Great front during the lull that Britain was at war and the followed the grim Militia Department began Passchendaele offensive. to mobilize a Canadian Over the summer and contingent. The Medical autumn of 1917 the Corps had a hard deci- British and German sion to make. Georgina armies had fought each Pope had been the head other to a standstill barely of the Nursing Service for 30 miles from Pope's virtually its entire exis- Number 2 Stationary tence. She was one of the Hospital. Now both sides very few nurses in the were using the winter to country with campaign recupurate. But even dur- experience, was highly ing "quiet" times the decorated and very Medical Corps had to respected. She was also ^ treat an average of 50,000 52 years old. As the z casualties per month. Corps geared up for war, Christmas 1917 at the Duchess ofConnaught Red Cross Hospital at A Canadian nurse it named another, Taplow, England. Pope served there briefly during the fall of 1917. recalled one of her typical younger veteran of South nights in a casualty ward: Africa as Chief Matron of the nursing arrived in a theatre of war. In the years Usually over half the patients, were contingent. Pope's friend Margaret since South Africa, military medicine on the 'Seriously III List/ with a death .MacDonald would sail for Europe. had made great advances in organiza- every second night or so. I remember a Pope herself would remain in Halifax. tion and technique. Unfortunately, haemorrhage, [and] emergency opera- Although bitterly disappointed, weapons technology had developed at tion, followed by an intravenous saline there is no evidence that Pope tried to an even deadlier pace. Poison gas, and constant watching and treatment use her considerable political influ- machine guns, and heavy artillery com- until 3 a.m., when the fine looking New ence for redress following her demo- bined to make the trenches of the Zealand boy quietly breathed his last. tion. Although she pressed for a field Western Front the most lethal battle- The same night another patient died, posting through regular channels, she fields in history. Following one British and another still was very low, while was informed there were no openings offensive a hospital chaplain observed: there were at least four delirious head for someone of her age. Her experi- "It is a good thing not to be too squea- cases, who seemed to take turns pulling ence as a designer and administrator mish, the smell of septic limbs and their dressings off or getting out of bed. of training programmes also conspired heads is enough to bowl one over. As We also had a number of gas gangrene to keep her in Halifax. During the usual in a good many deaths, one had cases, and these are quite a worry, as course of the war the Nursing Service the back of his head off, another from the infection travels so fast — and last, would send over 3,100 nurses to the nose downwards completely gone. but not least, the haemorrhages, which France and Flanders. Pope was instru- But it is the multiple wounds that so often occur in the dead of night when mental in training this expanded force. appear worst, men almost in pieces, the the lights are dim. Here my flashlight It is apparent that she set a hard pace number intensifies the horror, we get so served me in good stead.. .." for herself. In May of 1917 her health few slight cases." faltered, and she was The now-fragile health forced to take a twelve- of the 55-year-old Pope week sick leave. Ironically, soon began to buckle soon after she recovered under the strain of nights she was cleared for duty like these. In February overseas. After a short 1918 she was diagnosed stint in England, she was with arteriosclerosis. The posted to France. In timing could hardly have December 1917 she been worse. arrived at #2 Canadian On 21 March the Stationary Hospital at German Army launched Outreau — about 20 miles what it hoped would be from the British lines in the decisive campaign of the Ypres salient. the war. The British Fifth Army, 50 miles south of Outreau, bore the brunt A Carnival of Death of the first attack and the situation quickly grew Circumstances had chang- desperate. Over the next ed greatly from the first Staff at No. 2 Stationary Hospital, Outreau, France in February two weeks the British time Nurse Pope had 1918. Pope is seated immediately to the right of the male officer. retreated 40 miles. By 5 April they had managed to stabilize The 'Back Number' "My hair is now white," Georgina their line, but at a cost of 170,000 casu- Pope told an interviewer shortly before alties. As soon as they sensed momen- On 1 March, 1919 Matron Cecily Jane her death. "In fact I am long since a tum begin to falter, the Germans Georgina Fane Pope officially retired. 'back number/ But the sight of sol- switched their offensive northward. She returned to the Island, where she diers or sailors marching, a bugle call, This time their target was the the sound of the drums or military British First Army, in positions band has power still to stir in me less than 25 miles from Pope's the old enthusiasm and once more hospital. Again the British were I long to minister to such cheery able to hold on, but this time only patients as the soldiers and sailors barely and at a cost of another oftheKing.,, 100,000 casualties. To the staff of hospitals like the one at Outreau, it must have Sources seemed like a whirlwind had been loosed. Already swamped with their Georgina Fane Pope left almost no share of 270,000 casualties, they personal reminisences about her had to face the very real possibility life and career. Information about of being overrun by the enemy. her childhood was pieced together Two Canadian hospitals to the from her brother Joseph's mem- south were actually bombed and oirs, Public Servant (1960), the shelled, and at one point German Dictionary of Canadian Biography troops occupied positions less than entry on her father, William Henry, 15 miles away. By June though, it and various genealogical files. A was apparent the crisis was over. sketch of her early nursing career As German attacks grew weaker, is presented in a newspaper article the British and French commands celebrating the 50th anniversary of fashioned an offensive of their own. her graduation from Bellevue On 8 August Canadian troops {Guardian, 7 December 1935). launched the first in a series of Pope's service in South Africa is assaults that would, by November, described in her official report on put an end to the long war. the Canadian Nursing Sisters with For Georgina Pope, the war the First Contingent (Sessional would end sooner. In June she Paper No. 35a, Canadian Parlia- began to show signs of battle ment) and in an article she wrote fatigue. She complained of "fre- for the Canadian Nurse in 1935. quent headaches and attacks of Many thanks to Parks Canada, for dizziness." "Easily startled by any allowing access to a background sudden noise," she was sleeping paper on Matron Pope prepared by David Smyth, Staff Historian. less than three hours a night. On Nursing Matron Georgina Fane Pope, from a 15 August she collapsed and with- Thanks also to the National Ar- photo probably taken during the 1920s. She is chives of Canada, for sending us a in two days was in a London hospi- wearing the distinctive blue uniform she tal. Here a Medical Board con- copy of Pope's Personnel Records. designed for the Canadian Army Medical Corps General information on military firmed her arteriosclerosis and nurses (thus giving them their World War I nick- added neurasthenia or "shell nursing can be found in Canada's name, "the Bluebirds"). Above her war medals, Nursing Sisters (1975), an official shock" to its diagnosis. Pope displays her Royal Red Cross. Although the condition was history prepared by G.W.L. often seen as little more than Nicholson. Background informa- "cowardness" in the first years of the lived as a semi-invalid in Charlotte- tion on military medicine in the First war, by 1918 it was recognized that town. She died there on 6 June 1938. World War is from "The Canadian modern warfare could drive even bat- Obituaries paid tribute to her as "the Army Medical Corps in the First tle-hardened veterans to varying Island's Florence Nightingale." World War," (Robin G. Keirstead, MA degrees of insanity. (It was estimated As a mark of the respect in which Thesis, Queen's University, 1983). that 80,000 British troops suffered she was held, she lay in state at Information about military medicine in some form of battle fatigue during the Government House before being the South African War is taken from war.) Taking her age, rank, and previ- buried with full military honours. A graduate work completed by one of ous service into account, the Board story is told that shortly before her the authors. Our thanks to Earle declared Pope "temporarily unfit for coffin was closed an old soldier Kennedy and Doug Morton for shar- duty" and sent her home. In Canada, approached the honour guard. He had ing their research and advice, ill another Medical Board declared her served with the garrison in Halifax and permanently unfit for duty, and recom- asked if he could leave a keepsake. mended she be granted a pension With tears in his eyes he placed one of based on her war-related injuries. his own medals in the coffin.