More frequent and very welcome visitors were Lieut.-General Sir Francis Lloyd, G.C.V.O., K.C.B., D.S.O., and Lady Lloyd. The men enjoyed seeing them, especially when the General Officer Commanding made speeches, and the staff of the hospital much appreciated his kindness and courtesy. His successor, Major-General Sir Geoffrey Fielding, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., and Lieut.-General Sir T. H. Goodwin, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who succeeded Sir Alfred Keogh as Director General, were also among those who inspected the hospital.
The news that the Chief Magistrate, Sir John Dickinson, had called, and would return next day, was disturbing, for relations between magistrates and suffragists had not always run smoothly. The Doctor-in-Charge questioned the quartermaster: ‘What do you think the Chief Magistrate can be coming about?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered, ‘unless it is about that kitchen-maid.’ And she told how one of the kitchen staff had been to a dance in her brother’s uniform, and, coming home through the streets, had been warned by a policeman.
With this crime on their consciences Sir John’s visit was awaited uneasily. But he came in friendship, with outstretched hand and kind congratulations upon the womanly work which his former acquaintances had found to do.
With Endell Street before it as a demonstration, the War Office could not fail to perceive that ward duties and the general administrative work of hospitals came easily within the scope of women. Towards the end of 1915 instructions were circulated to officers in charge of hospitals, requiring them to set free men so employed and to replace them with women. Those in command of military and of naval hospitals began to arrive at the women’s hospital, anxious to learn how this might be done. They were given opportunities of seeing women stretcher-bearing, handling bags of sugar and potatoes, or doing fire-drill. Armed with notebooks and pencils, they would make notes of all they saw and sadly discuss what they used to describe as ‘the hopeless difficulty of the situation.’
During 1916 and 1917 one staff officer called periodically to see whether every possible man had been replaced by a woman. His time was spent in inspecting hospitals and trying to persuade those in authority to replace their men; and naturally Endell Street was his example. Again and again he came to say that he was assured that it was impossible to use women for certain services, and to ask how it was done. Amongst other things, he had been told that to use women in the X-ray room was ‘indelicate.’ The Doctor-in-Charge reminded him that skiagrams were made through clothing and in a dark room.
‘I never thought of telling them that,’ he said.
Talking over his experiences elsewhere, he remarked: ‘As soon as I say, “But at Endell Street——” I see a nauseated expression come over their faces.’ And his tales of the obstruction he met with among old-fashioned officers and N.C.O.’s were amusing.
Acting on these general orders, the Doctor-in-Charge applied in September 1916 for authority to replace fourteen men by fourteen women. Referring to the R.A.M.C. personnel, she wrote:
The greater number of these men (nineteen) are physically unfit. Their physique is very poor and their work is not satisfactory. I find that able-bodied women are capable of performing practically all the duties which these men perform.