‘Old Age is Not a War Disability’: Debating Aged Care for Nurses of World War I in post-1945 Australia

Abstract

Australia’s repatriation system was generally considered one of the most generous in the world when it was established during World War I, but the care it provided to veterans has been the subject of much debate since its inception. In the 1950s, the Repatriation Department faced specific criticisms from voluntary organisations, such as the Returned Services League of Australia and Edith Cavell Trust Fund, over access to repatriation hospitals and aged care for returned nurses of World War I. Focusing on these debates between the voluntary sector and the federal government around the care provisions for this group of veterans, the article explores the reactionary attitudes of the Repatriation Department to the needs of these women as they reached old age. It argues that returned nurses faced considerable disadvantages in accessing benefits from the department on the basis of gender, which were further accentuated as they aged.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Jan Bassett, Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992); Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘Gifts for France: Australian Red Cross Nurses in France, 1916–1919’, Journal of Australian Studies 17, no. 39 (1993): 65–78; Melanie Oppenheimer, Oceans of Love: Narrelle – An Australian Nurse in World War I (Sydney: ABC Books, 2006); Peter Rees, The Other Anzacs: Nurses at War (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2008); Kirsty Harris, ‘New Horizons: Australian Nurses at Work in World War I’, Endeavour 38, no. 2 (2014): 111–21; Samraghni Bonnerjee, ‘“This Country Is Rotten”: Australian Nurses in India during the First World War and Their Encounters with Race and Nationhood’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 65, no. 1 (2019): 50–65. Examples of representations of Australia nurses on screen and in literature include: Anzac Girls (Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Screen Australia, Screen Time, 2014); Mary-Rose MacColl, In Falling Snow (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012); Tom Keneally, The Daughters of Mars (Sydney: Random House Australia, 2012).

2 Clem J. Lloyd and Jacqui Rees, The Last Shilling: A History of Repatriation in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994); Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Marina Larsson, Shattered ANZACs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009); Carolyn Holbrook, Anzac: The Unauthorised Biography (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2014); Martin Crotty, Neil J. Diamant and Mark Edele, The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative History (New York: Cornell University Press, 2020).

3 Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2013). See also Peter Stanley’s group biography of veterans of Nine Platoon, 21st Infantry Battalion, Men of Mont St Quentin: Between Victory and Death (Melbourne: Scribe, 2009), 191–255. Additionally, new research is being conducted by Janet McCalman, whose ARC project takes a broader approach to veterans’ lives and uses the Repatriation files held by the National Archives of Australia for a ‘cradle-to-grave medico-demographic study of survivors of military service’ in World War I. See John Hopper, Michael Reade, Rebecca Kippen, Joan McMeeken and Janet McCalman, ‘Early Results from the “Diggers to Veterans” Longitudinal Study of Australian Men Who Served in the First World War. Short- and Long-Term Mortality of Early Enlisters’, Historical Life Course Studies 9 (2019): 52–72.

4 Garton, 84.

5 Bassett, 95.

6 Letter to E. Folland from M. Lindsay, 30 April 1958, National Archives Australia (hereafter NAA): M289, 8.

7 Letter to the ECTF, 29 September 1955, NAA: M289, 8.

8 Jan Bassett cited in Kirsty Harris, ‘Work, Work, Work: Australian Army Nurses after World War I’, in When the Soldiers Return: November 2007 Conference Proceedings, ed. Martin Crotty (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 2009), 1.

9 Garton, 100–11; Jill Roe, ‘Chivalry and Social Policy in the Antipodes’, Historical Studies 22, no. 88 (1987): 395–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/10314618708595758.

10 Philip Payton, Repat: A Concise History of Repatriation in Australia (Canberra: Department of Veterans Affairs, 2018), 24.

11 Edward Davis Millen cited in Garton, 81.

12 Lloyd and Rees, 19–41.

13 Garton, 86.

14 Ibid., 88.

15 Ibid., 99.

16 Bassett, 99.

17 Ibid., 99.

18 Harris, ‘Work, Work, Work’, 3.

19 Ibid.

20 Garton, 111.

21 Kathryn Hunter, ‘National and Imperial Belonging in Wartime: The Tangled Knot of Australians and New Zealanders as British Subjects during the Great War’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 63, no. 1 (2017): 38.

22 Harris, ‘Work, Work, Work’, 3.

23 Hunter, 35–7.

24 Bassett, 92–110.

25 Ibid., 102.

26 Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘“Fated to a Life of Suffering”: Graythwaite, the Australian Red Cross and Returned Soldiers, 1916–39’, in Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War, eds Martin Crotty and Marina Larsson (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 18–38. See also Melanie Oppenheimer, All Work, No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (Walcha, NSW: Ohio Productions, 2002).

27 Oppenheimer, ‘“Fated to a Life of Suffering”’, 32.

28 Payton, 40.

29 Oppenheimer, ‘“Fated to a Life of Suffering”’, 35.

30 ECTF Trustees, cited in Bassett, 99.

31 Garton, 86.

32 Harris, ‘Work, Work, Work’, 5.

33 Martin Crotty, ‘The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 53, no. 2 (2007): 184.

34 Report from Commissioner of Pensions, ‘Veterans’ Allowance Bill Proposed by Returned Soldiers’ Association’, 4 June 1935, SS7W2756 4, Archives New Zealand (hereafter ANZ).

35 General Secretary of British Empire Service League to the Honourable J.G. Cobbe, Minister of Pensions, 26 April 1935, SS7W2756 4, ANZ.

36 Ibid.

37 Report from Commissioner of Pensions, ‘Veterans’ Allowance Bill Proposed by Returned Soldiers’ Association’, 4 June 1935, SS7W2756 4, ANZ.

38 Garton, 95.

39 British Legion, Report of the Special Committee Established for the Purpose of Investigating the Problem of Prematurely Aged Ex-Service Men (London: Haig House, 1937); Letter to Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice, 11 April 1938, T 161/1395/11, The National Archives, Kew.

40 Hopper et al., 58–70.

41 Alan Skerman and Australia Department of Repatriation, Repatriation in Australia: A History of Development to 1958 (Melbourne: Department of Repatriation, 1961), 74.

42 Australian Soldiers’ Repatriation Act, no. 58 (1935), 148.

43 Garton, 95.

44 ‘RSL Plan for Aged Nurses’, Sunday Mail (Queensland), 8 March 1953, 3.

45 Speech in favour of RSL Motion 50, c.1957, NAA: M289, 8.

46 Ibid.

47 Bassett, 109.

48 Skerman and Australia Department of Repatriation, 204.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Speech in favour of RSL Motion 50, c.1957, NAA: M289, 8.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Pat Jalland, Old Age in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2015), 215–26.

55 Ibid., 215.

56 Ibid., 221.

57 Speech in favour of RSL Motion 50, c.1957, NAA: M289, 8.

58 RSL General Secretary to Walter Cooper, cited in Bassett, 109.

59 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Representatives, 19 September 1957, Edmund Fox, Member for Henty.

60 Jalland, 218–19.

61 ‘Operation Gratitude’, 1956, NAA: A705 153/1/1736.

62 ‘Operation Gratitude’, Argus, 19 July 1956; ‘Operation Gratitude’, 1956, NAA: A705 153/1/1736.

63 ‘Operation Gratitude’, 1956, NAA: A705 153/1/1736.

64 Ibid.

65 ‘All for Gratitude’, Argus, 16 August 1956; ‘S.E.C. £1,000 Lifts “Gratitude” Fund’, Argus, 1 September 1956; ‘Heed a Plea from Freda Irving: Will You Aid Our War Nurses?’, Argus, 15 March 1956.

66 ‘You Gave £100,000 Too Much’, Argus, 9 November 1956.

67 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 21 March 1956, Bert Hendrickson.

68 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 21 March 1956, Walter Cooper.

69 Bassett, 110.

70 Melanie Ambler to Sir Albert Ernest Coates, October 1969, NAA: M289, 8.

71 Ibid.

72 Payton, 67.

73 Letter from Edith Cavell Trust Fund to Minister for Repatriation, November 1969, NAA: M289, 8.

74 Letter from Mac Holten to Beryl Trigellis-Smith, Secretary of ECTF, 25 August 1970, NAA: M289, 8.

75 ECTF to Peter Venn, State Secretary (Victoria) RSL, 6 October 1970, NAA: M289, 8.

76 Letter from Beryl Trigellis-Smith to unknown, 16 March 1972, NAA: M289, 8.

77 Letter to Beryl Trigellis-Smith from unknown, 2 December 1970, NAA: M289, 8.

78 Bassett, 110.