Gertrude Bellow, Matron, Red Cross Hospital, Wallesley:LETTER to Pte BERTIE HIBBETT,Fazakerly Hospital, Liverpool. (1)
My dear Hibbett,
I am so sorry you were detained at Fazakerly. But Cheer up – and come back soon again to us. Let me know what is going to happen, when your operation will take place, & I shall do all in my power to have you amongst us once more – and that very soon.
I am very busy so cannot wait to write more now. But keep your heart up, as you have done all along – and remember ‘every cloud has a silver lining’.(2)
With very best wishes from
Yours Very Sincerely, Gertrude Bellow. Matron.
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ELIZABETH HIBBETT WEBB
Pt Bertie sent this Letter Home, with the words ‘Two very homely letters aren’t they?’ in pencil across the top.
(1) Fazakerly Hospital, Liverpool. Requisitioned by Military for WW! wounded soldiers.For details see Letter 13th Dec 1916.
(2) ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’: Ivor Novello. Popular WW1 song.cf Letters: 26th Dec. 1915; 9th July 1916.
NEXT POST: 20th Dec 1916. Bertie Does Not Look at All Well.
15.Cpl. Byrd C.B. Cold. Guard. Songs:Son of Mine. Shipmates o’mine.
Popular Choruses
GOD SAVE THE KING Oct 4/16.
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Where once the Nuns paced too and fro’, Now wounded Soldiers come and go, They liken the Cenacle to a herbal cure For the Matron and Nurses are so good and pure.
Oh! to sleep in a cosy bed On pillow soft to rest my head And have my sore wounds dressed by a kind nurse Whose virtue is mercy and nothing worse. A.H.Hibbett. Oct 1916.
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BACK from the FRONT.Dedicated to my Home.
Cheer O! Cheer O! Here I fly! Dodging shells which burst so high; Daring not to stop and sigh, I picture Home Sweet Home so dear. Ma and Pa are thinking of me At Home beyond that strip o’ sea, Where I so long and wish to be. Where I can banish all my fear.
Back Home! Back Home! There’s mon (sic) Mere And mon (sic) Soeur, et Frere, et Pere. I kiss them all here and there. Then with our faces all aglow We gather round the fire-side. Putting war news on one side We talk until we’re satisfied. And very soon forget the foe.
Back Home! Back Home! Oh! What it is To feel the thrilling Heavenly Bliss To give my Mother a loving kiss. In my Home where I behold And see my father’s face again After my life of toil and pain Which I had not born in vain But for Freedom to uphold. A.H. Hibbett. Oct 1916.
The Cenacle. Concert Programme Illustration showing New Brighton Tower. A.H.Hibbett. 1916. Both The Cenacle & the Tower have been demolished. (See Tower Note below).
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ELIZABETH HIBBETT WEBB
Pte Bertie Hibbett’s Letters from The Front show how much he enjoyed taking part in Army Concerts. He also describes Hospital Concerts given by the YMCA & Red Cross Nurses in France. It could well be that my father had a hand in organising this Cenacle Concert & another given on 10th Nov. 1916. Perhaps he even acted as Master of Ceremonies, as he did later in his College years.
The Programme of Recitations, Songs & Instrumental pieces is typical of Concerts during WW1 and a good illustration of the talent amongst Cenacle soldiers & nurses alike. No doubt the Matron made sure the content was suitable for a respectable establishment! My father’s illustrations, all done with his left hand, are delightful in their attention to detail. The Programme Shield could be that of the Cenacle when it was a Nunnery, but it is more likely one of his own designs – a phoenix rising from the ashes, a symbol of new life.
THE COMPANY:-
(1) Pte: H. Farrar. (Royal Army Medical Corp). Pianoforte Solo: Silver Ruin. Connection to poem by Robert Burns, 1916? See From the Somme to Silver Tassie. ‘Sean O’Casey & the Contorted Legacy of 1916’ by Edward Mulhock.
(2) Nurse Greenham. Song: Had I but known where my caravan rested. (Waltz Tune). Listed in Columbia Records Calendar, 1916-1917.
R.A.M.C Autographed Cigarette Paper: Pte Ernest C. Kirk, 1916.
(3) Pte Ernest C. Kirk. (Royal Army Medical Corp). Recitation: The Fireman’s Wedding. W.A. Eaton.Romantic ballad of young fireman who saved a young woman from fire & made her his bride.
(4) Nurse Kathleen Hay.Recitation.
Red Cross Nurses: Sonia Langdon & Kathleen Hay 1917. Signatures: Sonia Langdon & Kathleen Hay.April 12th 1917.Cenacle Red Cross Nurse Cockeram.
(5) Nurse Cockeram.Violin Solo.
(6) Pte: Wallace. (23rd London Regt).Song. Tennessee.
(7) Cpl: J. Beck.(1/10th Liverpool Scots).Song: The Trumpeter.1904. Words: JFrancis Barron. Music: J. Airlie Dix 1862 -1911.
Corporal J. Beck.Cigarette Paper Signature: Cpl J. Beck.
(8) Nurse Wilcox.Song : Michigan. ‘Michigan, My Michigan’ – to the tune O Tannenbaum/ O Christmas Tree. Lyric: Winifred Lee Brent Lister 1862.
Pte A.H. Hibbett.Sniper Atkins. A.H.H. 1916.
(9) Pte A.H. Hibbett (South Staffords). Recitation. Sniper Atkins.Own poem. Foncquevillers trenches. cf Hibbett Letters. May 1916.
Cigarette Paper Signatures: Rflm A.F. Pays; Rflm G. Hughes & Rflm W.S Markwell. The Cenacle. July 1916. Ward 6.
(10) Rflm A.F. Pays (The Queens Westminsters).Song: Until. 1910. Wilfred Sanderson. 1878 -1935.
(11) Nurse Evans.Violin Solo.
Cigarette Paper Signature: Pte A. Kelly.
(12) Pte A. Kelly (South Irish Horse). Song at Piano. Goo Goo Eyes. cf ’19th cent American Black Music’. 1900 hit. ‘Just becos she made dem Goo-Goo-Eyes’ / ‘If you love your baby make Goo-Goo-Eyes’. Phrase exploited by Barney Google, 1923.
Pte A. Kelly’s Cartoon: The Matron & The Cook. Matron Gertrude Bellow.
(13) Nurse O’Neil.Song: I love the Moon. Classic Nursery Rhyme/ Lullaby. ‘I see the moon the moon sees me, down through the leaves of the old oak tree, please let the light that shines on me shine on the one I love’. Anon.
(14)Cpl. Featherstone. (Durham Light Infantry). Song:Macafferty. Irish Street Ballad. Patrick McCaffrey, Ireland Regt of Foot, born 1842, executed 1862 for killing two officers. Folk hero.
Cigarette Signatures: Corpls: C. Bostock Byrd & H. Turnbull R.E.
(15)Cpl. C. Bostock Byrd. (2nd Bn Coldstream Guards).Songs:Son of Mine. Shipmates o’mine. Wilfred Sanderson.1913.
Corp. C. Bostock Byrd.
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NB. All the material posted here comes from the Hibbett Collection of Photographs, the Concert Programme and my father’s 21st Birthday Autograph Album given to him by his best pal Vernon Evans. Details of the Cigarettes are given elsewhere in the Hibbett Letters.
New Brighton Tower.
New Brighton Tower: steel lattice observation tower 567ft high, opened 1898 -1900 as part of a Pleasure Park. Dismantled 1919 except for Tower Ballroom (Beetles venue when not at The Cavern Club) – finally closed 1969.
NEXT POST: 12th Oct. 1916. ‘Our brother has gone to that peaceful land where there is no war.’
THE CENACLE RED CROSS HOSPITAL, NEW BRIGHTON: Pte BERTIE HIBBETT, MATRON, NURSES & WOUNDED PALS. 1916 -1917.
The Cenacle Garden. Pen & Ink Drawing. A.H.Hibbet. Oct 1916.Pte Bertie Hibbett in mufti & holding a cigarette on New Brighton beach July 1916. He appears to have a plaster on his neck under his right ear covering a wound received when running out of the trenches.1.7.1916.
Pte BERTIE HIBBETT’S eldest brother, Harold,took most of these photographs during visits to The Cenacle between July 1916 -1917. As a Chemist he would have developed & also printed them.
As well as drawing the house & grounds, Pte Bertie Hibbett tried his hand at a poem dedicated to The Cenacle.
‘Where once the Nuns paced to and fro’, Now Wounded Soldiers come and go, They liken the Cenacle to a herbal cure For the Matron and Nurses are so good and pure.
Oh! to sleep in a cosy bed On pillow soft to rest my head And have my sore wounds dressed by a kind nurse, Whose virtue is mercy and nothing worse.’ Oct 1916.
Matron & Nurses. Front door, The Cenacle, Red Cross Hospital, New Brighton.Matron Gertrude Bellow.
The Cenacle. Sister F.M.Clive with Red Cross Nurses G. Wilkinson & D. Puddicombe.Patient Heads at the The Cenacle Entrance: H. Turnbull, Beck, (Unknown but in photo 30th July post) , Bertie Hibbett & Bostock Byrd.The Cenacle Red Cross Nurses: Sonia Langdon & Kathleen Hay. April 12th 1917.
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ELIZABETH HIBBETT WEBB
It is clear from these photographs of smiling faces that the Matron Sisters & Red Cross Nurses at the Cenacle were indeed kindness itself. I hope that readers researching their Mothers, Grandmothers & Aunts who were Red Cross Nurses in WW1 may find their relatives & their signatures here.
Patients appear to have been allowed to wear mufti when they had visitors. See photo below (most probably taken at the same time as the one of my father abovewith his arm in a sling). N.B. I think the names given refer to theRed Cross Nurses, N. Cockeram and N. Higson.A note under the photo states the man on the left was an Irishman – in which case he could be Pte Kelly, S. Irish Horse, who sang & played a Song entitled ‘Goo Goo Eyes!‘ at a Cenacle Concert. Oct. 1916.
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NEXT POST: 16th AUG. 1916.
The WW1 Letters and Drawings of Private Bertie Hibbett, 1/5th South Staffordshire Regiment, to his family in Walsall, will be posted again, one hundred years on, from August 1914 to November 1918, by his daughter Elizabeth Hibbett Webb. The first posting will be the Recruitment Postcard sent by Queen Mary's Grammar School Headmaster to the Hibbett family on holiday in Abergele, Wales.
WW1 PARCELS TO THE FRONT & LETTERS HOME 