Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889 - 1982) - Scottish writer, poet, artist, Arctic traveller and botanist

 With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for sending me the

poem that set me off researching Isobel Wylie Hutchison

Portrait of Isobel in 1935
by David Foggie RSA

Isobel Wylie Hutchison was born in Kirkliston, Linlithgowshire (West Lothian), Scotland, on 30th May 1889.   Her parents were Thomas Hutchison, who had been a merchant with the East India Company, and his wife, Jeannie, nee Wylie. The family home was Carlowrie Castle, Kirkliston, Linlithgowshire (West Lothian), Scotland.   Isobel began writing at an early age, kept diaries from 1903, and edited "The Scribbler", a magazine created by the family. Isobel learnt Italian, Gaelic, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, Icelandic, Greenlandic and also learnt some Inuit words.

Isobel's youngest brother, Frank, (Francis J. b. 1897) died in 1912 at the age of 16 in a climbing accident in the Cairngorms and his loss affected her deeply. Another brother, Thomas Walter, (b. 1886) was killed in the First World War.

From 1917 to 1918, Hutchison studied business training, marketing, religion and languages, at Studley College in Warwickshire, which had been set up for the education of young women in agriculture. During 1918, things were very bad, with little food for the animals and all the men gone to the war. Influenza swept through the college and some students died. 

In 1920, Isobel suffered a mental breakdown but was sustained by her continued success with her writing - her poetry was acclaimed by “The Scotsman” newspaper and she began writing a novel.  She began travelling in 1924 and painted many scenes from her adventures, visiting the Arctic, apan, China, Trans-Siberian Railway, Moscow, Poland, Berlin, Estonia and Denmark.

After the Second World War, Isobel gave talks on the radio for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Carlowrie Castle was very run down after the war, having been used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Isolbel needed to continue working in order to pay for repairs and maintenance. Electricity was only installed there in 1951.

In later life Isobel suffered from Arthritis, but this did not stop her working.  She died at Carlowrie Cast;e in 1982, aged 92 and is buried in the northern cemetery in Kirkliston, along with her sister, Hilda Scott Primrose Hutchison (b. 1892).

Isobel’s WW1 poetry collection, “Lyrics from West Lothian” (Pillans & Wilson, 1916), was privately p rinted and sold in aid of the Red Cross Fund and she had a poem published in "A book of twentieth-century Scots verse" Edited by William Robb and published by Gowans & Gray in 1925.

“A Book of Twentieth-century Scots Verse” Edited by William Robb (Gowans & Gray, 1925)

 Her other poetry collections were:

How Joy was found: A Fantasy in Verse in Five Acts. London: Blackie; New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1917

The Calling of the Bride. Stirling: E. Mackay, 1926

The Song of the Bride. London: De La More, 1927

The Northern Gate. London: De La More, 1927

Lyrics from Greenland. London: Blackie, 1935

Other works by Isobel Wylie Hutchison:

Original Companions. London: Bodley Head, 1929

The Eagle's Gift: Alaska Eskimo Tales. New York: Doubleday Doran, 1932

Flowers and Farming in Greenland. Edinburgh: T. A. Constable, 1930

On Greenland’s Closed Shore: The Fairyland of the Arctic. Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1930

North to the Rime-Ringed Sun: Being a Record of an Alaska-Canadian Journey Made in 1933-34. London: Blackie, 1934, 1935; New York: Hillman-Curl, 1937

With August Masik: Arctic Nights Entertainment: Being the Narrative of an Alaskan Estonian Digger, August Masik, as told to Isobel Wylie Hutchison. Glasgow: Blackie, 1935

Stepping Stones from Alaska to Asia. London: Blackie, 1937

She had articles published in  the WNational Geographic" magazine:

"Walking Tour across Iceland", April 1928

"Riddle of the Aleutians", December 1942

"Scotland in Wartime", June 1943

"Wales in Wartime", June 1944

"Bonnie Scotland, Post-war Style", May 1946

"2000 Miles through Europe’s Oldest Kingdom", February 1949

"A Stroll to London", August 1950

"A Stroll to Venice", September 1951

"Shetland and Orkney, Britain’s Far North", October 1953

"From Barra to Butt in the Hebrides", October 1954

"A Stroll to John o' Groats", July 1956

"Poets' Voices Linger in Scottish Shrines", October 1957

Isobel had several other articles published in many journals and newspapers. and gave more than 500 lectures during the course of her life. The plants she collected during travels are in Kew Gardens, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh and the British Museum. Some of the artefacts she collected are on display in the National Museum of Scotland and the Scott Polar Research Institute (University of Cambridge).

Sources:

Find my Past

Reilly,Catherine W.  "English Poetry of the First World War: A Biblioigraphy" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978) p. 177 and p. 25.

Hoyle, Gwyneth “Flowers in the Snow: the Life of Isobel Wylie Hutchison” (Nebraska University Press, 2001).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobel_Wylie_Hutchison 

Portrait of Isobel in 1935 by David Foggie RSA (31 December 1878 Dundee – 2 June 1948)

Poem from “The Westminster Gazette” 3 November 1916

"The Westminster Gazette" was a Liberal newspaper based in London, founded in 1893. It was known for publishing sketches and short stories, including early works by Raymond Chandler, Anthony Hope, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Saki, and travel writing by Rupert Brooke. One of its editors was caricaturist and political cartoonist Francis Carruthers Gould. The paper was dubbed the "pea-green incorruptible" – Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone having personally approved its green colour. It was merged into its leading Liberal rival, The Daily News on 1 February 1928.

Mary Lloyd McConnel (1860 - 1957) – poet and writer

Grateful thanks to Jim Marshall of the Harlech Old Library in Wales who sent  me a copy of the cover of one of Mary's collections. Additional information kindly supplied by Jose Holford @JosieHolford via Twitter

Mary Lloyd was born on 28th December 1860.  She married John McConnel, of Yorkshire and they lived in Larkfield, Ilkley, Yorkshire. Mary met Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Concord, New Hampshire, USA:  

"In 1904, Mrs. Mary Lloyd McConnel, of Ilkley, England, was in First Church of Christ, Scientist, of Concord, New Hampshire, when Mrs. Eddy spoke there..."

On the 1939 Census, Mary is listed as widowed and living at Larkfield, Skipton Rd. Ilkley, Yorkshire. She listed her occupation as a "Christian Science Practitioner".  Mary died on 19th March 1957. 

Mary’s WW1 collections were:

“Songs In The Night” by Mary Lloyd McConnel published in 1920 by William Walker & Sons Ltd. - 72 pages of poems.

“Songs of Aftermath” by Mary LLoyd McConnel published by William Walker and Sons Ltd., January 1927  - see cover photo kindly sent by Jim Maxwell.

Mary seems to have published two collections of poems about WW1:

“Songs In The Night” by Mary Lloyd McConnel published in 1920 by William Walker & Sons Ltd. - 72 pages of poems.

“Songs of Aftermath” by Mary LLoyd McConnel published by William Walker and Sons Ltd., January 1927 - see cover left kindly sent by Jim Maxwell.

Mary Lloyd McConnel also seems to have written for the "The Christian Science Monitor", as the following poem was published by them.   She is not listed in Catherine W. Reilly's "English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978).  If anyone can help please get in touch.  The Christian Science Monitor was a daily newspaper founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Church of Christ Scientist.

"There is no death!" a poem by Mary Lloyd McConnel

O Death! At home they call it death —

And sit and weep because they think

Their sons beloved are slain, 

And they are left alone

To mourn their dead.

While we, across the trenches' top,

Have leaped to Life, and find

We have but left behind

The rags and blood and dirt

Of grimy battle field, and —

A great host of us,

All eager, happy, and alive —

Are pressing onwards toward a goal

We dimly see of duty, beauty,

Love, and Life, which calls us on

To tasks more glorious than

We could achieve midst stress

And storm and reek of cannon smoke.

Hark! You can hear us calling

From each to each a greeting

As we meet, — comrades and erstwhile foe.

"Friend! Is this all to death?

Why should we ever fear

This passing through a shadow

Which but seems a moment's shock,

As though we had but bowed our heads

To pass beneath a narrow doorway

From some dugout small, and found

Ourselves a little blinded by the light

Which shines from Heaven's eternal day?

 ou here! — You too! — And you!

 How glad we are to find

 Each other, and to prove

 There is no death!"

By Mary Lloyd McConnel

[Originally published in The Christian Science Monitor]

Christian Science Sentinel, September 21, 1918

"Unfoldment" by Mary Lloyd McConnel

There was a small community of Christian Scientists meeting in a humble "upper chamber." None were rich in this world's goods, but all were eager that everything pertaining to the services should reflect beauty and harmony. Although no rule was made, a tacit understanding existed that little expenditure was to be incurred for flowers, as funds could be employed to better advantage in furthering the cause of library and distribution work. At the beginning of each season a list was made of the women attending the services, and each one was to be responsible for one Sunday's floral offering.

Through this channel came to one woman an unlooked for opportunity in the practical development of her own garden. She had relied upon the periodical visits of a gardener, and so long as things looked neat she had remained content to imagine herself too busy in other ways to spare time or attention for out of doors. However, as the weeks went by she began to wonder what her garden would produce by the time her name appeared upon the "flower list." In looking around she discovered greater possibilities than she had known to exist, and soon found that the more she cut and gave away the more profusely her flowers bloomed, and that in sharing her garden with friends and neighbors she was learning to enjoy it as she had never done before.

https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1916/7/18-44/unfoldment

Isa Constance Miles (1881 – 1962) - Poet and writer - pen names Marjory Damon and Marjory Royce

With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for finding this poet for us.

Debbie has a Facebook page commemorating the women of WW1

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1468972083412699

Photograph of Isa found by
DebbieCameron

'Majory Royce' was one of the pen names used by Isa Constance Nicoll, who was born in Kelso, Scotland on 22nd June 1881. Her parents were Sir William Robertson Nicoll (1851 – 1923 -  a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters - who founded the “British Weekly”, a Nonconformist newspaper, with the help of publishers Hodder and Stoughton), and his wife, Isabella, nee Dunlop (1857–1894).  Isa’s brother was Henry Maurice Dunlop Nicoll (1884 –1953), who became a noted psychiatrist.  After the death of their mother in 1894, their father married Catherine Pollard (1863–1960) and Isa and Henry had a half-sister - Mildred Robertson Nicoll (1898–1995).

 

Isa grew up in Hampstead, London, where the family lived after Sir William's health necessitated retirement from the church. In 1909, she married Elystan Miles, who was at that time a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, and the couple lived in Eltham in south east London, and in Hampshire. In addition to the children's fiction, which Isa wrote and published using her pen name Marjory Royce, she also wrote and published work using her married name - Constance Miles.  On the 1939 Census, Isa and her husband were living in Shere in Guildford, Surrey and she listed her occupation as Journalist.  

Isa died on 22nd January 1962. 

A SONG FROM THE TRENCHES by Marjory Royce 

 YOU, who have always loved the garden so, 

Oh, Mother, are you wandering there to-night? 

While yet the July roses blush and blow, 

And the tall border blooms in the fading light. 

The lovely corners that I used to know — 

I think them over, I remember well .... 

Down in this old dug-out, time passes slow 

Amid the hum and screaming of the shell. 

Through all the sadness there's one thought to cheer- 

That English gardens still in peace may grow 

Tranquil and safe. You are still happy, dear. 

You, who have always loved the garden so ! 

From "One hundred of the best poems on the European War by Women Poets of the Empire" .- Edited by Forshaw, Charles Frederick (Elliott Stock, London, 1916) p. 138

which is available to read as a free download from Archive:

 https://archive.org/details/onehundredofbest02fors/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

Sources:

Catherine W. Reilly "English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978) page 280  listed as Marjory Royce 

Find my past

Free BMD  

and Debbie Cameron 

Interestingly, under the surname Miles in her Bibliography of WW1 English poetry, Reilly also lists

 

Miles – pen name of Osbert Sitwell - Reilly p. 224

Patrick Miles – poet - Reilly p. 224

Susan Miles - pen name of Ursula Roberts - Reilly p. 224

Ethel Carnie (1886 - 1962) – British writer, poet and activist

It is always exciting to discover a hitherto unknown poet. With thanks to  Historian Debbie Cameron for this information and for additional information to Lizbet Tobin on Debbie’s Facebook Page Remembering British Women In WW1 – The Home Front and Overseas    

Ethel was born in Oswaldwhistle in Lancashire, UK, the birth being registered in Blackburn, Lancashire in the first quarter of 1886.  Her parents were David Carnie and his wife, Louisa Carnie, nee Entwisle.  Ethel had a brother, Rupert, who was born in 1888.  All the Carnie family members worked in Lancashire’s cotton industry.  Ethel began writing at an early age.  She was educated at Great Harwood British School from 1892 until 1899, where she showed promise in composition and teachers frequently read her essays aloud to the rest of the class.  Working in the mills from the age of eleven, Ethel  became a poet, journalist, children’s writer and novelist.  She was a prolific writer, publishing at least ten novels and writing and publishing poetry. 

By 1911, Ethel was living in Great Harwood, Lancashire with her mother  and described herself as a cotton cop winder and journalist.  In June 1915, Ethel married Alfred Holdsworth.

Although he shared his wife’s socialist and anti-war views and may have applied for exemption on conscientious grounds, Alfred enlisted in the East Lancashire Regiment and was posted to the Western Front in 1917. Ethel was a socialist, a pacifist and anti conscription. She carried a red flag to the railway station to see her husband off. Ten months later, in 1918, he was reported missing, presumed dead. Later that year, Alfred was discovered alive in a British hospital, having been transferred from a prisoner of war camp.

A poem by Ethel Carnie that Debbie Cameron found in magazine “The Woman Worker”, the magazine of the Federaton of Women Workers.

Ethel protested against the introduction of conscription in WWI, addressed 20,000 women during the Women’s Peace Crusade and chaired local meetings of the British Citizen Party.   After her marriage, Ethel used her married name when writing.

During the 1920s Ethel edited and produced “The Clear Light”, an anti-fascist journal, with her husband.  She recognised the threat of Mussolini in the early 1930s. 

Dr Kathleen Bell is one of the leading figures in the campaign to introduce the work of the long-forgotten writer to a new generation. She writes that:

“at its best, Holdsworth’s poetry illuminates the gap between working-class people’s desire for liberty, often evident in their imaginative capacity, and the constraints and suffering of their lives”.

Ethel’s novel “Helen of Four Gates” (1917) was filmed in 1920. Lizbet Tobin discovered that prints exist in the Cinémathèque Québécoise film archive [35mm positive], and in the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House film archive [16mm reduction positive] and that there is a clip available: 

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1396187/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1kCzijfZ0HON6yh04kxHtg9QHZ1MvGgf4i5kvW_OwjoIBxT2rXZeI5gqQ

Published works by Ethel:

Rhymes from the Factory (Blackburn: Denham, 1907)

Songs of a Factory Girl (London: Headley Brothers, 1911)

The Lamp Girl, and other stories (London: Headley Brothers, 1913)

Miss Nobody (London: Methuen, 1913) (Reprinted with new Introduction: Kennedy & Boyd, 2013)

Voices of Womanhood (London: Headley Brothers, 1914)

Helen of Four Gates (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1917) (Reprinted with new Introduction: Kennedy & Boyd, 2016)

The Taming of Nan (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1919)

The Marriage of Elizabeth (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1920)

The House that Jill Built (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1920)

General Belinda (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1924) (Reprinted with new Introduction: Kennedy & Boyd, 2019)

This Slavery (London: Labour Publishing Company, 1925)

The Quest of the Golden Garter (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1927)

Eagles' Crag (London: Stanley Paul, 1928)

Barbara Dennison (London: Stanley Paul, 1929)

Sources:

https://www.pendleradicals.org.uk/.../ethel-carnie.../

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1396187/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1kCzijfZ0HON6yh04kxHtg9QHZ1MvGgf4i5kvW_OwjoIBxT2rXZeI5gqQ

https://www.pendleradicals.org.uk/pendle-radicals/ethel-carnie-holdsworth/?fbclid=IwAR3My_n2QOs_FPMuAMi_BFc6ar6STzHodMBMJIiMTrEb7LUTu3DtlLC6UZ0

Roger Smalley Uclan Thesis 

http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/9729/2/RogerSmalley.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0oS97gS-VsFfZcVH4fZlKB_Xb0Uf-V1dU5zGOt5ezFUbrhjjVhEskiPfA

Catherine Wells (1872 – 1927) - British writer and poet

With thanks to Henry Gott of Blackwells Rare Books in Oxford for suggesting I

research Catherine, to Julie Cauvin who confirmed that the Red Cross WW1

Record card is indeed for Catherine Wells, wife of H.G. Wells, and to David Gray

for additional information

Photograph of Catherine
from her Book

Catherine was born Amy Catherine Robbins in Islington, London, UK on 8th July 1872.   Her parents were Frederick and Maria Catherine Robbins.   Catherine, who was known as Jane, was a student of Herbert George ( H.G.) Wells during his time as a teacher.  They were married in St. Pancras, London in 1895 – she was his second wife.  Jane died on 6th October 1927, in Dunmow, at the age of 55.

After Catherine’s death in 1927, H.G. Wells had her poetry and short story collection published under the title “The Book of Catherine Wells”, which was published by Chatto & Windus in 1928.  Several of her poems relate to WW1:

“Spring 1915”

Spring, dear Spring,

Dear Beauty !

You come with soft feet

Bringing your old, immortal joys

That have given us in all our years

Delight so exquisite.

You spread your loveliness before us –

A tender veil!

As if in kindness you had hung a curtain

Thick fold upon thick fold unstintingly

To stop our hearing how a madman

Raves, in the next room.

It is n o good, dear beauty of the earth !

Tearing great rents athwart you

Come the screams of war.

(page 199)

“June 1916”

Last night I dreamed.

In the void of space

Stood three great Archangels with pitiless eyes

About an armoured monster in their midst;

A brutal shape that spat impotent fire

At their bright immortality.

‘He must be beaten our of life,’ they cried;

‘He is War.’

And as I looked came multitudes

Carrying their all, and heaped upon the brute

Each staggering load, blow after blow, until he lay

Writing beneath a monstrous heap of treasure

And brave bodies of men, and women’s tears

That ran down the heap of pearls.

And still the angels cried, ‘More yet ! more yet !

Not yet is there enough !’ Again

The people toiled with fast diminishing loads

Until they had no more to give.

It seemed enough, until a tiny chink

Showed in the heap.

‘One thing more,’ they cried, ‘and ye have done !’

‘We have no more,’ the people wept.  And then

The angels turned, and each his finger held

Straight aimed at me, and called in unison,

‘Thy son ! ‘

(page 200)

Daily here my body sits, 

My fingers tearing bandage strips,

My drilled eyes watch the pattern fits,

My agile scissor cuts and snips,

But truant Brain leaps out at play

And flies to some pellucid day

And suddenly I seem to hear

A sea maid singing at my ear

And straight am with her on a strand

Of cockle shells and pearly sand.

Where rainbows crown the leaping surf

And green weed wraps the rocks with turf.

We wreathe her yellow hair with weed

And play with coriander seed

And coral beads and horns of pearl -

The while that here my body sits,

My fingers tearing bandage strips.

(From "The Book of Catherine Wells" - short stories and poems - published in 1928 after Catherine's death by Chatto and Windus, London, 1928, pages 199, 200 and 201). Catherine's poem "Red Cross Workroom; 1917" appears to tell us about her contribution to the war effort. 

WW1 Red Cross Record card for Mrs H.G. Wells - From Julie Cauvin:  “Catherine did a Red Cross course: From the Boston Review blog spot ‘...She had gone through a Red Cross course so as to be competent in domestic emergencies. She had a file of shop addresses where things needed could be bought. Her garden was a continually glowing success...’ The Wells family lived at Easton Glebe - Besides his home in London, Wells rented Easton Glebe, Dunmow, Essex, on the Easton Lodge estate, between 1910 and 1928.”  

On the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship Facebook page on 20 June 2021, David Gray says:

“Flicking through a volume written by H. G. Wells from Siegfried Sassoon’s library, I found a small, printed booklet being the Eulogy by Wells for his wife Catherine. I’m guessing Sassoon slipped it into the book after attending the service.”

  Sources:  Find my Past, 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/275088519186250

"The Book of Catherine Wells" - short stories and poems - published in 1928 after Catherine's death by Chatto and Windus, London, 1928

British Red Cross WW1 Record card for Mrs H.G. Wells https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Card?sname=wells&page=8&id=221468&forwards=true&fbclid=IwAR2MvZfMovV5XhtROsixFr8WdLWpPQMPGnq8RTXEhFbhCmwMwaK2Pu1a3Oc

http://www.hundredparishes.org.uk/people/detail/hg-wells

Matilda Betham-Edwards (1836 – 1919) – British poet, writer, novelist

Matilda was born on 4th March 1836 in Westerfield, Suffolk.  She was the fourth daughter of Edward Edwards, a farmer, (c. 1808–1864) and his wife Barbara (1806–1848), nee Betham, whose father, the Reverend William Betham, was an antiquary and cleric. 

Matilda’s aunt was the artist, poet and novelist Matilda Beetham (1776 – 1852).  Matilda later wrote about her aunt in her book “Six Life Studies of Famous Women” (1880).  Matilda was educated in Ipswich and as a governess-pupil at a school in London.   She studied French and German in France and Germany and went on to write travel books.  After the death of their father, Matilda and her sister managed the family’s farm.   

Matilda was friends with Charles Dickens and with Charles and Mary Lamb, who were friends of her Mother’s.

Catherine W. Reilly tells us that Matilda published a volume of poetry during the First World War – “War Poems” (Arrowsmith, Bristol, 1917) – 24 pages.  According to Reilly, a copy of that collection is held by Manchester Public Libraries.  Matilda also wrote an account of the German occupation of Alsace – “Hearts of Alsace” (1916).

“The Two Mothers” by Matilda Betham-Edwards

‘Poor woman, weeping as they pass,

Yon brave recruits, the nation’s pride,

You mourn some gallant boy, alas!

Like mine who lately fought and died?’

‘Kind stranger, not for soldier son,

Of shame, not grief my heart will break

Three stalwards have I, but not one

Doth risk his life for England’s sake!’

Published in the “Westminster Gazette” on 11th December 1914. 

“War Poems” was the last poetry collection Matilda had published. It was inspired by the events of the First World War and some of the poems focus on theAlsace region of France. Most of the poems in the collection are patriotic and encourage men to join the fight, as shown by this extract from “No Son of Mine”(1915): 

“From over-sea thy brethren hie, 

Great England’s sons, not these home-born, 

Whilst thou by thousands let’st them die 

Thyself, unharmed, the butt of scorn!”. 

Matilda died on 4th January 1919 in Hastings, Sussex. 

Sources: 

Find my Past

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_Betham-Edwards

https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2017/03/15/choosing-passion-expectations-matilda-betham-fight-womens-rights/#.YOBSHRpKjcs

Hibberd, Dominic and Onions, John, Editors.- “The Winter of the World Poems of the First World War” (Constable & Robinson, London, 2007)

Reilly, Catherine W. “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, new York, 1978)

There is a Biography of Matilda Betham Edwards written by Professor Joan Rees and published in 2006.  

Booksellers Jonathan Frost Rare Books Ltd. have a copy of Matilda’s WW1 poetry collection listed in their July 2021 Catalogue https://frostrarebooks.com/catalogues/book-catalogues/july-2021-catalogue/

Henriette Tayler (1869 - 1951) – WW1 poet and nurse

With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for finding this information for us  

Helen Agnes Henrietta Tayler was born in Chelsea, London, UK in 1869. Her parents were William James Tayler, Laird of Glenbarry, and his wife, Georgina Lucy, nee Duff.  Known to family and friends as Hetty, her siblings were an elder sister, Constance and a younger brother, Alistair.  The family lived in London but every summer they travelled up to William Tayler’s childhood home - Rothiemay House, near Huntly in Aberdeenshire.

Henriette served with the French Red Cross during WW1.  After the war, she served in Italy, nursing civilians and servicemen suffering from 'Spanish flu'. She wrote her story - “A Scottish Nurse at Work: Being a Record of what One Semi-trained Nurse Has Been Privileged to See and Do During Four and a Half Years of War”  In Hetty's own words: ‘We did all our work in eucalyptus masks and everything was disinfected, even our letters.”

Maggie Craig has written a new book about Scottish nurse Henrietta Tayler.

With thanks to Lizbet Tobin and Eric Webb for additional information.

Henriette'a poem

Sources:  Find my Past

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D8457452

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1468972083412699

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Tayler

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nts.org.uk%2Fstories%2Fhenrietta-tayler-scottish-jacobite-historian-and-first-world-war-nurse%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0zKdJWwrVj8gt-gSTWNe6mE5UF-RQFOs5P3HzOJOGWsatOC3EXZjhRFwg&h=AT3Kp1ZFoZy0TFp3s51ryCPHZ0siCakEBIIq0kcEm4aHhZNTaNDSe4J_v7XI3we-G2jrU_O_Wf7Mv8EWuNk_qPElVY5O1LJ-uTZWJGGHVOnYuXVEZTWgE1oZJRH6an7MCJOBsKN4y0FNHN7UOLY&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT1FmUfOmMqoSQfh_NqeokPVAfGfcSqH0KZivzVclMZ1y1Po2TyTV3HqszAE67RB52g54Rmt42sFsf6GHKaqVZGoPgZmUEK_qgS2O8Abclf9XJoBbNcj_OSp9Y8Jdt97X1gubrisPF2fDfFvIc6IrFMoneupr3XZCG35h-7e2Je8bWkaAptrMxSIMa3-0KfqzNBmb1Eb