About this Item
An archive of photo albums, postcards and ephemera, compiled by Edith H. Hordley, a prominent British Nursing Sister who served in the Princess Christian s Army Nursing Service Reserve during the Second Boer War from 1900 to 1902 and joined Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) in 1903. During the First World War she attained the rank of Principal Matron and was awarded the Royal Red Cross (First Class) in 1916. The collection contains well over 300 snapshot images from 1900-02, documenting Hordley s work and associated travels in South Africa, including images of Nursing Sisters, soldiers and officers, and South Africans (including refugees, laborers, and tribal members), at field hospitals, camps, and towns in and around Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and elsewhere in the Transvaal, around Cape Town, Queenstown, and elsewhere in Cape Colony. Additionally included are about 75 real photo and color printed postcards collected by Hordley during the First World War when she was stationed with the British Expeditionary Force in northern France, and an additional album of over 100 images documenting her work after the war at a military hospital in Alexandria, Egypt. Edith Helen Hordley (c.1872-1953), a pupil at the Orme Girls School from 1882 to 1890, sailed to South Africa on July 2, 1900 and received the Queen s Medal and King s Medal for her service there during the war. We know from evidence in the albums that she worked at an Imperial Yeomanry Branch Hospital in the Transvaal and at a military hospital in Wynberg, Cape Town. It is likely that it was in South Africa that she met Emma Maud McCarthy, who later became the most celebrated leader of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service when she served as Hordley s Matron-in-Chief with the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders during the First World War. Both women joined the QAIMNS immediately after its founding in 1902, and they were lifelong friends. McCarthy frequently refers to Hordley throughout her War Diary from 1914-1919. For about six months in 1917, Hordley served as Acting Matron-in-Chief when McCarthy was taken ill with appendicitis. An historically important and compelling personal archive of a leading member of the British military nursing service, dating from a time when the military actively discouraged women from documenting their wartime services, and also destroyed many official records. A detailed list is available upon request.
Seller Inventory # 399230
Contact seller
Report this item
