Connection with the Hunter Valley – Nurse Brown is a mystery.  She is named on the honour roll of St Mark’s Anglican Church Islington.   A Nurse Isabel Brown graduated from Newcastle Hospital 1899.  There is a service record for Sister Mabel Isabel Brown but she is clearly not the same person and the record does not indicate any connection with Islington or the wider Newcastle region.

Honour roll St Mark’s Anglican Church Islington 1985.  Nurse Brown is named top of centre column. 
Photo: Courtesy Ed Tonks
Click image to enlarge.

There are a number of reasons why there is no Australian service record that matches this Nurse Brown – the record may have been lost OR Nurse Brown may have joined the British Nursing Service (Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve) OR Nurse Brown was a Red Cross Voluntary Aide who served overseas – some Australian women did pay their own way to Egypt or Europe to be near their husbands and brothers who were in the AIF.

        References:        

Audrey Armitage, A Golden Age of Nursing, Royal Newcastle Hospital Graduates’ Association Book Committee, Newcastle, 1991

St Mark’s Anglican Church Islington honour roll,  “Nurse Brown”

Do you know more?

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© Christine Bramble 2013