No Man’s Land 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 1 11/6/19 12:25 PM ALSO BY WENDY MOORE The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 2 11/6/19 12:25 PM No Man’s Land THE TRAILBLAZING WOMEN WHO RAN BRITAIN’S MOST EXTRAORDINARY MILITARY HOSPITAL DURING WORLD WAR I WENDY MOORE New York 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 3 11/6/19 12:25 PM Copyright © 2020 by Wendy Moore Cover design by XXX Cover image [Credit here] Cover copyright © 2020 Hachette Book Group, Inc. Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copy- right. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Basic Books Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 www.basicbooks.com Printed in the United States of America Originally published in 2020 by Atlantic Books in the UK First Edition: April 2020 Published by Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Basic Books name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group. The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. The Cook-Dickerman Collection is held at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, National Park Service, New York State. Pictures belonging to the Anderson family and Annie Fox are held at the London School of Economics (LSE) Women’s Library. Print book interior design by Jeff Williams. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. ISBNs: 978-1-5416-7272-7 (hardcover), 978-1-5416-7273-4 (ebook) LSC-C 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 4 11/6/19 12:25 PM To Jennian Guide, mentor, and friend And for all the women who worked at Endell Street and all the men and women who were treated there 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 5 11/6/19 12:25 PM 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 6 11/6/19 12:25 PM Contents Arrivals 000 One A Good Feeling 000 Two A Sort of Holiday 000 Three Sunshine and Sweetness 000 Four Good God! Women! 000 Five The Laughing Cure Theory 000 Six Almost Manless 000 Seven Pioneers, O Pioneers! 000 Eight The March of the Women 000 Nine Darkest Before Dawn 000 Ten Full of Ghosts 000 Eleven The Soft Long Sleep 000 Acknowledgments 000 Select Bibliography 000 Notes 000 Index 000 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 7 11/6/19 12:25 PM 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 8 11/6/19 12:25 PM Arrivals Covent Garden, London, 1915 It was like slipping into a dream. Or waking from a nightmare. They had grown used to the constant thunder of shelling, the crackling of rifles and machine guns, the screams and groans of their comrades. Now all they could hear was the gentle thrum of the city at night as they rumbled through dark, deserted streets. For months, they had known only the rural landscapes of France and Flanders, where every living thing had been crushed and obliterated into the mud of the trenches and shell holes. Now they were being driven down a narrow street between tall buildings that blotted out the night sky. They had been living in a world peopled by men. But now they would enter a world run solely by women. Most of them were young men in their twenties and thirties; some were just boys in their late teens. Officially, they were sup- posed to be at least nineteen to fight overseas, but some had lied about their age. Many had signed up in bands of friends in a fit of patriotic zeal, or shown up shamefaced at a recruitment office after being challenged with a white feather by a stranger in the street. For some, being injured had come as a blessing—a “Blighty wound” that allowed them to escape the death and devastation of war. For others, their injuries meant a new kind of terror and fear for the future: the prospect of never working, perhaps never walking again, 1 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 1 11/6/19 12:25 PM NO MAN’S LAND the possibility of perpetual pain, of permanent disfigurement. They had suffered long and agonizing journeys, having been scooped up from the battlefield by regimental stretcher-bearers, sometimes after lying abandoned for hours in “no-man’s-land” before being shuttled back to casualty posts in tents and dugouts for basic first aid, a shot of morphine, and perhaps a hurried operation. They had been transported in ambulance trains to one of the French ports, crammed into hospital ships to cross the Channel, then packed into Red Cross trains bound for London. Arriving at one of the main- line stations, they had been collected by volunteers who drove them in ambulances or private cars across town. If the men asked their drivers where they were being taken the answer came: “To the best hospital in London.” When they pulled up outside the old workhouse building in En- dell Street, in the heart of London’s Theatreland, the great black iron gates were opened by a woman in a military-style jacket and ankle-length skirt. The ambulances juddered to a halt in the dimly lit courtyard, and women stretcher-bearers, wearing the same military- style uniforms, carried them to a lift. When they arrived on one of the wards, they saw a room bright with colored blankets and fragrant with fresh flowers. Rows of patients watched, their heads resting on crisp white pillows, as the new arrivals were lifted onto coarse blankets protecting the beds from their muddied and bloody uniforms. The men were surrounded, naturally enough, by female nurses, orderlies, and clerks. Then the doctors arrived. And all of these were women, too. From the physician who assessed the condition of the patients to the surgeon who inspected their wounds, from the radi- ologist who ordered X-rays to the pathologist who took swabs, from the dentist who checked their teeth to the ophthalmologist who tested their sight, every one of the doctors was female. Other than the burly policeman at the entrance and a handful of male or- derlies who were too old or too infirm for combat, the Endell Street Military Hospital was staffed entirely by women. For some of the men who arrived at Endell Street on one of those dark nights, the stink of the trenches still clinging to their uniforms, 2 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 2 11/6/19 12:25 PM Arrivals to enter this female world after living in the hell wrought by men was a glorious relief. But for others it was a threatening, shocking, even distressing experience. Women nurses were one thing. Many of the men had already had their wounds dressed by female nurses in field hospitals and on ambulance trains. Women doctors were something else entirely. None of them had ever been treated by a female doctor in civilian life—the idea of women providing medical care to men was simply unknown—and they knew full well that women doctors were not ordinarily employed in the army. Some of the men had wounds in intimate places; others had contracted venereal diseases after sexual encounters with women in France. A few were convinced they had been sent to Endell Street to die, that they were hopeless cases. For why else would the army dispatch them to a hospital run solely by women—and not just any women, but suffragettes, former enemies of the state? Yet, as the women doctors listened sympathetically to the men’s fears, and as trained nurses gently tended their bodies and friendly orderlies comforted their spirits, the men began to change their minds. Before long, they all agreed that Endell Street Military Hos- pital was, in fact, the best hospital in London. 3 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 3 11/6/19 12:25 PM 9781541672727_HC1P.indd 4 11/6/19 12:25 PM 1 A Good Feeling Victoria Station, London, September 15, 1914 Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray waited to board their train.1 Tall, slim, and erect in the midst of the fourteen younger women who were going with them, they exuded calm authority. Everyone had come to see them off—family, friends, and comrades from the suffragette movement—and to ply them with gifts. One well-wisher had arrived with three boxes packed with provisions for the journey, while others had brought fruit, chocolates, or flow- ers. Surrounded by the luggage they would take onto the train, the women looked awkward in their stiff new uniforms. Their “short” skirts, grayish-brown, just covered the tops of their ankle boots, and their matching belted tunics were buttoned firmly up to their necks. Their main luggage had already been stowed and would be waiting for them upon arrival—or so they thought.