Photograph of Nurses and Patients

Description

Pte. Jack Rogart is photographed standing with a group of nurses and patients. He served in the Royal Artillery 1914-18 and acted as a medical orderly. In this role he assisted medical staff in their duties. As shown in this photograph many of the medical staff were women.

During the First World War thousands of women served as nurses. The Queen Alexandra’a Imperial Military Nursing Service was the main body of military nurses and had 10,000 nurses in it by the end of the First World War. In addition to military nurses there were thousands of women who volunteered as part of the Voluntary Aid Detachment. They supported nurses and cared for patients. Jewish women served in both of these organisations.

The women in this photograph appear very attentive, several of them looking at the patients rather than the camera. In the accompanying photo of the same hospital a nurse is shown seated in the centre of a group of patients. They are holding hockey sticks. It is unknown whether these photographs were taken in a hospital in France or England. There was initially reluctance to send female nurses to the front line with military bodies not viewing it as a place for women. As a result for the first few months of the war women served in hospitals in the United Kingdom. However as need grew women were sent to the front and served diligently in harsh conditions.