British Army Nurses
History and Heritage of British Army Nurses
This is a wiki for the history and heritage of British Army nurses and nursing, including the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps and its antecedents (Army Nursing Service; Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service (Reserve); Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and its Reserve, Territorial Force Nursing Service, Territorial Army Nursing Service).
The origins of the project lie in my PhD research, a prosopography of nurses who served during the South African (Boer) War. This work was subsequently expanded to include nurses who may have served as Army nurses before the Boer War, as well as the impact of Boer War veterans on the development of military nursing during the First World War. Over time, the site has evolved into a general repository for information relating to British Army nurses.
The Nurses
This wiki holds pages for over 2,500 British Army nurses[1] spanning more than a century of military nursing history. You can use the search bar to find any nurse by name, or browse by clicking one of the category links below. You can also search for specific terms — such as a hospital, ship, location, or medical condition — to find nurses connected to that topic.
- ↑ plus some from other Commonwealth countries and some civilians and religious orders who cared for British sick and wounded
Pages marked as Stub are newly created and awaiting further research and editing.
Work in Progress
This site is an ongoing project, with material being consolidated from earlier websites and archival sources. Current work focuses on transferring and developing the following sections:
- The Boer War – nurses serving in South Africa, 1899–1902
- Royal Red Cross Recipients – award history and biographical records
- Reports of nurses serving in WW1 – first-hand accounts and official reports
- Researching Army Nurses – sources and methods (now complete)
The collection of pages for individual nurses, which forms the spine of the site, is being added to continuously. If you have information about a nurse that you would like to share in order to help create or develop a page, please use the contact form to get in touch.
