With thanks to Debbie Cameron* for this amazing discovery and for her permission to share it with you.
Debbie explains her discovery:
“This is brilliant. I found it on a Royal College of Nursing website:
“What we did in the Great War’, a hand-made magazine created by Agatha Christie and other VADs, 1918. Before she became the world’s leading crime novelist, Agatha Christie served as a volunteer nurse (VAD) in the First World War.
She created a remarkable magazine with fellow VADs. It includes a fascinating array of illustrated articles, dramatic scripts and musical scores. There is even a comic strip story featuring a poisoning – a theme that Christie would return to in her best-selling crime novels. Lent by The British Psychoanalytical Society Archive
Lucy London there is a poem by the great lady herself. About pharmacists!
I think these are the only pages digitised: “
https://www.rcn.org.uk/servicescrapbooks/
NOTES:
Agatha was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on 15th September 1890 in Torquay, Devonshire, UK. Her parents were Frederick Alvah Miller, an American “gentleman of substance", and his wife Clarissa "Clara" Margaret, née Boehmer. She was the youngest of three children
When Agatha grew up, she had short-lived relationships with four men and an engagement to another. In October 1912, she was introduced to Archibald "Archie" Christie at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford at Ugbrooke, about 12 miles (19 km) from Torquay. The son of a barrister in the Indian Civil Service, Archie was a Royal Artillery officer who was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in April 1913. The couple quickly fell in love. Three months after their first meeting, Archie proposed marriage, and Agatha accepted.
During the First World War, Agatha Christie served as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) at a makeshift hospital in Torquay Town Hall. She worked with the Red Cross caring for wounded soldiers, assisting in the operating theater, and later worked in the dispensary. Her experiences during the war, particularly her knowledge of poisons gained while working in the dispensary, significantly influenced her later writing, especially her use of poison as a murder weapon in her detective novels. Her first novel - "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" - was written during that period and published after the war.
Original source:
*Historian and writer Debbie Cameron has this Facebook Page dedicated to the women of WW1 *https://www.facebook.com/groups/1468972083412699/?multi_permalinks=3582402482069638¬if_id=1749058185896028¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic_tagged&ref=notif
Additional sources: Find my Past and Wikipedia
