(Photo, Alfieri)
A few weeks later, Dr. Chalmers Watson, C.B.E., engaged in the organisation of the Q.M.A.A.C., and many long talks over formations and detail were held in the doctor’s sitting-room upstairs, when Dr. Chalmers Watson’s ideas on uniforms and her views on discipline and regulations came in for some friendly criticism. It was at Endell Street, too, that she and Dame Helen Gwynne Vaughan were first made known to each other, and it was from the same quarter that she drew some of the early members of her corps. In the desire to help the new service, the Doctor-in-Charge set free Miss Ethel Thomas, the Steward, and Miss Doreen Allen, the Assistant Steward, that they might take administrative posts in the Q.M.A.A.C. Afterwards she always maintained that their success in that corps was due, not so much to their own ability and exceptional qualities, as to the training which they had received at Endell Street.
Dr. Chalmers Watson steered the Q.M.A.A.C. through the shoal of vexatious delays and difficulties which beset its early days with great skill, and she and Dr. Laura Sandeman made a gallant struggle to procure for the women doctors serving with it a position and terms equal to those granted to men.
The first detachments of Q.M.A.A.C. were hurried overseas in the early summer of 1917, and as was only natural, a demand for hospital accommodation arose almost at once. In August, the Deputy Director of Medical Services, finding himself at a loss how to meet this demand, approached the Doctor-in-Charge and asked whether Endell Street could make temporary accommodation for women returning from France. The arrangement of the building did not lend itself easily to this purpose, but his request was met most willingly, and the top floor of one of the blocks was made ready for their reception. The situation was complicated by an order from the War Office to set aside two beds for officials of the corps.
At first a little room on the Women’s floor was adapted for these ladies; but an order was shortly received to make room for women requiring to be segregated, and the little room was no longer available for general use. Small rooms on other floors were very seldom empty, and in these circumstances the only beds which could be offered to officials were those in curtained cubicles in the general ward, which were used in sickness by the Sisters of the hospital. The ladies objected to this accommodation even temporarily, and they were certainly entitled to better quarters; but they were apt to lay the blame for a situation over which it had no control on the hospital, instead of on the Army Medical Department. After frequent representations from the Doctor-in-Charge, extending over nine months, instructions were given for the reception of officials elsewhere; but in the meantime irate administrators, arriving in the middle of the night and refusing to make use of the only empty bed in the hospital, were sometimes a real difficulty.
The Q.M.A.A.C. Hospital at Isleworth was not opened till the end of January 1919, and the ‘temporary accommodation’ at Endell Street was required for more than two years. The other women’s services found it convenient to use it, and members of the G.S.V.A.D., the W.R.N.S., N.A.C.B., W.R.A.F., and W.L., found a resting place there. Ladies were admitted from overseas and the East, with babies, nurses, governesses, and occasionally husbands; while, under the heading of ‘civilians,’ women who were working in France with the Y.M.C.A., the Soldiers’ Christian Union, the Expeditionary Force Canteens, the Lena Ashwell Concert Parties, and officers’ wives and servants, were also given hospitality.
While this development in the women’s services was proceeding, the Government was making increasing demands upon medical women, and was introducing them in greater numbers into the hospitals at home and abroad. In August 1917, a cable from Lady Chelmsford reached Dr. Garrett Anderson, asking to be informed as to the terms of appointment of doctors at Endell Street, and this was followed by a letter from the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund at Simla. She stated that it had been decided ‘that one of the large military hospitals in Bombay should be handed over to women doctors,’ and she asked for information and suggestions which might be helpful in organising it. The reply sent gave details of the Endell Street establishment, and urged that the women should undertake the ‘entire control and management’ of the hospital. It advised, on grounds of economy, that women should be employed as quartermasters and storekeepers, spoke of the ease with which discipline could be maintained by women, and of the help which a good warrant officer could give.
The Indian hospital was established on one of the finest sites in Bombay; but the charge of the hospital was vested in men, a Colonel and a Registrar being appointed, although women doctors could have filled these posts. The professional work, however, was in the hands of women, and they made an undoubted success of it. In 1919 when men were brought home from India in large numbers, some who had been in the Women’s Hospital at Bombay came to Endell Street. They said it was ‘the only good hospital they had been to in India,’ and spoke of it and of its doctors with great appreciation and pleasure.
A request for information and help came from medical women in America during 1918, enclosing a copy of a resolution which the Women Physicians of California were sending to their Government. The resolution urged
upon the Secretary of War that the services of women physicians be utilised to the fullest extent by the United States War Department in the present war; that opportunities for medical service be given to medical women equal to the opportunities given to medical men, both as members of the staffs of base hospitals and otherwise; and that the women so serving be given the same rank, title and pay given to men holding equivalent positions.