Superintendent Ethel Hutchings Royal Military Hospital Ministry of Pensions Rockfield St. Michael and All Angels Blackrock Dublin Ireland
Pictured is Ethel Hutchings, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, on the back of the photo is inscribed "Ethel with her men at Blackrock, Dublin." She also saw service with the QAIMNS in Alexandria, Egypt, and at the Bombay Presidency General Hospital. She was also stationed at the Sassoon Hospital in Poona, India.
In 1917 she received the Royal Red Cross for her nursing service during the Great War. A newspaper clipping of the time read:
Decorated by the King
Nurse Honoured
Sister Ethel Hutchings, who has been invested by the King at Buckingham Palace with the Royal Red Cross for devotion to duty, was afterwards received by Queen Alexandra at Marlborough House, who gave her a book with autograph and picture. Sister Hutchings is a daughter of the late Reverend. Edgar Fitzhenry Hutchings (and his wife Adeline Beatrice Gregg), rector of Heynestown, and a sister of the present rector and of Mrs. John Boyce Macartney (nee Maud Eleanor Hutchings), 28 University Square, Belfast, and Mrs. Barcroft (nee Irene Hutchings), The Rectory, Sixmilecross. She was formerly at Mercer's Hospital, Dublin, but since the outbreak of the war has been engaged at the Military Hospital, Curragh.
Ethel never married. She worked for the Ministry of Pensions for many years.
Ethel Sarah Hutchings was born in Queensland, Australia, on 9th January1880. Her parents and family had moved there from Ireland in about 1878, but they returned to Ireland and were living at Markethill in Armagh at the time of the 1901 census.
British Nursing Registers show that Ethel was certified as a nurse between 1907 and 1911 at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary in England. 1911 England census shows she was working as a hospital nurse.
For her World War One service she was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
On 29th September 1929, Ethel wrote in a letter to a relative in which she said:
I trained as a hospital nurse and during the war was made Superintendent of Royal Military Hospital and have been here ever since, but it is now under the Ministry of Pensions."
The letter was sent from Rockfield (St. Michael and All Angels), Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Irish Free State.
A newspaper item from the Somerset County Herald, dated 14th June 1947, reported that Miss Hutchings, Matron with the Ministry of Pensions Hospital at Musgrove, Taunton, had received the award of M.B.E. (Civil Division) (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).
Similar ones appeared in The Northern Whig (Monday 23rd April 1917), The Belfast News-letter (Monday 23rd April 1917) and in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph" (Monday 16th April 1917).
These describe Miss Hutchings as being Australian born and now has relatives living in Dorset and has been a matron for 30 years. She was an Army matron from 1917 until 1920 and since then has been a matron at the Musgrove since the hospital was taken over in February1946.
Ethel died on the 26th February1965 at Wandsworth, London, England.
With grateful thanks to contributor: Janice Moerschel, who is the first cousin, twice removed, of Ethel.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
My PTSD assistance dog, Lynne, and I have written a book about how she helps me with my military Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety, and depression. I talk about my time in the QAs and the coping strategies I now use to be in my best health.
Along the way, I have had help from various military charities, such as Help for Heroes and The Not Forgotten Association and royalties from this book will go to them and other charities like Bravehound, who paired me with my four-legged best friend.
I talk openly about the death of my son by suicide and the help I got from psychotherapy and counselling and grief charities like The Compassionate Friends.
The author, Damien Lewis, said of Lynne:
"A powerful account of what one dog means to one man on his road to recovery. Both heart-warming and life-affirming. Bravo Chris and Lynne. Bravo Bravehound."
Download.
Buy the Paperback.
This beautiful QARANC Poppy Pin Badge is available from the Royal British Legion Poppy Shop.
For those searching military records, for information on a former nurse of the QAIMNS, QARANC, Royal Red Cross, VAD and other nursing organisations or other military Corps and Regiments, please try Genes Reunited where you can search for ancestors from military records, census, birth, marriages and death certificates as well as over 673 million family trees. At GenesReunited it is free to build your family tree online and is one of the quickest and easiest ways to discover your family history and accessing army service records.
More Information.
Another genealogy website which gives you access to military records and allows you to build a family tree is Find My Past which has a free trial.
Former Royal Air Force Regiment Gunner Jason Harper witnesses a foreign jet fly over his Aberdeenshire home. It is spilling a strange yellow smoke. Minutes later, his wife, Pippa, telephones him, shouting that she needs him. They then get cut off. He sets straight out, unprepared for the nightmare that unfolds during his journey. Everyone seems to want to kill him.
Along the way, he pairs up with fellow survivor Imogen. But she enjoys killing the living dead far too much. Will she kill Jason in her blood thirst? Or will she hinder his journey through this zombie filled dystopian landscape to find his pregnant wife?
The Fence is the first in this series of post-apocalyptic military survival thrillers from the torturous mind of former British army nurse, now horror and science fiction novel writer, C.G. Buswell.
Download Now.
Buy the Paperback.
If you would like to contribute to this page, suggest changes or inclusions to this website or would like to send me a photograph then please e-mail me.
Free Book.
The death of the Brotherhood will be avenged.
RAF gunner Jason Harper and a team of Special Air Service operators are enraged after the death of their brothers by a terrorist drone strike. They fly into south-eastern Yemen on a Black-op mission to gather intelligence and avenge the death of their comrades.
Can they infiltrate the Al-Queda insurgents' camp, stay undetected, and call down their own drone missile strike and get home safely?
Will they all survive to fight another day?
Operation Wrath is a free, fast-paced adventure prequel to the non-stop action The Fence series by military veteran author C.G. Buswell.
Download for free on any device and read today.
This website is not affiliated or endorsed by The Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC) or the Ministry of Defence.
