World War One: album of Grace Mitchell, a nurse in England, France and Germany. Photographs, 1914/1918.

1914-1918

1 photograph album (47 leaves, approximately 386 photographs and prints) : photoprints, etchings, process prints ; album 23 x 30 x 3 cm

Copies may be supplied by the Wellcome Library in accordance with a licence from the copyright holder, Mary Gale Pitt representing the estate of Grace Mitchell

Wellcome Collection 675224i

Front paste down and fols. 1r-18r Photographs by Grace Mitchell of her work as a nurse at the 3rd Southern General Hospital, which included Oxford Town Hall and the Oxford University Examination Schools. One of the patients has the Victoria Cross: he is Corporal Frederick William Dobson (1886-1935), he is pictured with Isabel Mabel Shrewsbury, née Wace, a friend of Grace Mitchell. The picture was originally thought to be of George Morby Ingram (1889-1961).

Fols. 18v-21r? scenes in France, including Etaples after a German bombing raid had damaged a hospital behind the lines and killed a Canadian nurse. One of the photographs shows a case with the name "G. Mitchell". Another shows Grace Mitchell with her brother Archie in the same photograph

Fols. 21v?-22r? scenes in Germany, at 21 CCS (Casualty Clearing Station), Cologne. Wooden huts, taking tea etc.

Fols. 22v?-28r? scenes in Germany, at 36 [to be confirmed] CCS (Casualty Clearing Station), Cologne-Lindenthal. The flooding of the Rhine in Cologne. The "ABC of a CCS" (34 CCS)

Fols. 28v-32r Postcards, presumably of places visited by Grace Mitchell: Trier, Wiesbaden, Amiens, Trouville, Mons, Ypres, Hazebrouck, Le Touquet, Etaples.

Fols. 45r-46r? Photographs of the family at Theydon Bois after the war

Fols. 46v?-47v Photographs by Grace Mitchell of her work as a nurse at the 3rd (Third) Southern General Hospital, which included Oxford Town Hall and the Oxford University Examination Schools (continuation of fols. 1r-18r)

Fol. 48r (back pastedown) The family in Theydon Bois. One shows Peter Mitchell (with white beard), Eliza and their son Archie, who had returned from the war as a survivor. Others show the sisters and other people. Also ten loose photographs including a studio portrait of Archie Mitchell in uniform

Compiled by Grace Mitchell (1887-1950), daughter of Peter Mitchell and Eliza Harriet Mitchell (1849-1947), née Flower, tenant farmers of the Parsonage Farm, Theydon Bois, Essex. The album shows her work as a nurse in Oxford, France and Germany in and after the First World War, and includes photographs of her family, including her brother Archie Flower Mitchell (1885-1975), who was in the Royal Artillery in World War I, and her sisters Blanche Mitchell (1889-1962) and Jessie Charlotte Mitchell (1888-1970). After the war the three sisters and their brother lived in Theydon Bois and are buried in the churchyard there. Information about the album was kindly supplied by Mrs Mary Gale Pitt (grand-daughter of Mary Mitchell, sister of the compiler of the album), 2 April 2009