Highbury Voluntary Aid Detachments Hospital

Description:This photograph shows an outdoor ward at Highbury Hospital in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley staffed by Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD) nurses. Nationally, over 3,000 Auxiliary hospitals attached to Military Hospitals were established in town halls, schools and private houses, both in the country and in cities. Highbury Hall, which was previously the family home of Joseph Chamberlain, was affiliated to the 1st Southern General at the University of Birmingham, Edgbaston. Its equipment and the ‘provision of funds for its maintenance was most generously undertaken by the employees of Messrs. Kynoch’s Limited’.<small>¹</small> Highbury was staffed by a Commandant, Mrs Porter, who was in charge of the hospital (except for medical and nursing services), a Quartermaster responsible for provisions, a Matron who directed the work of the nursing staff; and members of the local VAD, who were trained in first aid and home nursing. Women in the neighbourhood volunteered on a part-time basis, although it was often necessary to supplement voluntary work with paid labour (for example, for catering or laundry). Professional medical expertise was provided voluntarily, despite the extra strain that this placed on local resources. The hospital was quickly earmarked to be the Special Neurological Department of the 1st Southern General and was fully equipped with ‘electrical appliances of the most modern and varied character, and a gymnasium with modern apparatus.<small>²</small> Barry Jackson had given the hospital the ‘very beautiful open-air pavilion which has been built in the grounds’.<small>³</small>

In her VAD memoir Florence Walters describes how at first Highbury had enjoyed a reputation for exclusive excellence when it was staffed by a select few, such as ‘Oliver Lodge’s daughter and her friends’ and that ‘only such as could speak the shibboleth were admitted to its ranks’.<small>⁴</small> ‘Speak the shibboleth’ was a once common phrase of Biblical origin used to refer to membership of exclusive groups. Although still perfectly efficient when she joined, the hospital had changed, and ‘after several years of war educated women were taking well paid posts often earning – individually - hundreds a year in the Service departments, Munitions, Inspectorships, etc.- and many of the voluntary St John’s people felt that – out of consideration for their families – they should in those hard times be making money for their families’. She warmly respected her colleagues but without illusions, acknowledging that ‘if there is anything “cattish” in a woman, hospital life brings it out.’ Walters regarded as a myth the ideal that only the virtuous responded to the call of nursing and that war hospitals were perfectly harmonious; a view also found in the Imperial War Museum papers of the Dodsworth sisters, Eve and Kit, who worked for a spell at the 1st Southern General. They record that tensions existed between professional Army nursing sisters and VADs.<small>⁵</small>


<font color="#666633"><small>¹ Birmingham and (part) Worcestershire St John Voluntary Aid Detachments, St John Ambulance Association and Brigade, Report for the two years ending 30th September, 1916 (Birmingham: VAD, 1916)
² Ibid.
³ Thekla Bowser, The story of British V.A.D. work in the Great War (London: Andrew Melrose, 1918)
⁴ Florence S. Walters, My wayside (London: Epworth Press, 1930
⁵ http://www.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.2742/setPaginate/No#page2</small></font>