THE CENACLE RED CROSS HOSPITAL, NEW BRIGHTON: Pte BERTIE HIBBETT, MATRON, NURSES & WOUNDED PALS. 1916 -1917.

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.

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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 above with his arm in a sling). N.B. I think the names given refer to the Red 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.