Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Isabel Ogilvie was born in Walhalla in 1885, the first surviving child of a miner, Joseph Ogilvie, and Catherine née Sneddon (Seddon). The family grew to number seven, four daughters and three sons. Three other daughters died in infancy. When their father died at the early age of 45 in 1902, Isabel, the oldest, was 17 and her youngest sibling was a toddler. Within a few years the widowed Catherine had moved her family to the city, living at 160 Rathdowne Street, 822 Drummond Street and then Nyora at 90 Fenwick Street. Isabel appears on the 1909 electoral roll as a student living at St Hilda's, Albert Street, East Melbourne. On the corner of Clarendon and Albert Streets, this Arts and Crafts mansion was built by successful tea merchant James Griffiths in 1907. He and his wife were both committed to Christian missionary work and almost as soon as it was completed the house was given in trust to a missionary society to become a Church of England Missionary Training Home. Living there in 1909, Isabel would have been among its earliest students. Perhaps missionary work was her intention at that time or perhaps other students were accommodated there as well.
When Isabel enlisted in the AANS seven years later in December 1916 she had completed three years' nursing training at the Austin Hospital and was 31 and eight months of age. Although on her attestation paper she stated her birthplace very clearly as Walhalla, a gremlin in the army machine typed it up as Gippsland, NSW. She embarked for overseas service on Anzac Day 1917 on the hospital ship Karoola, disembarking at Avonmouth near Bristol in mid June. By early July she was in France attached first to the 25th General Hospital. In November 1917 she was transferred to the 43rd Casualty Clearing Station, a front-line placement which would have involved very challenging work. Perhaps nurses were rotated in such positions; after a month she was returned to the 25th General Hospital. During 1918, in February and October, Isabel had two periods of fortnightly leave in England. By early 1919 she was herself in hospital, suffering from "debility" and returning to duty in March 1919. Soon after she was transferred to the 2nd Australian Auxiliary Hospital in England, where most of the patients would have been convalescent. Isabel returned to Australia as part of the nursing staff on the Kildonian Castle and was discharged from duty medically unfit in May 1919.
After her return Isabel was living at 90 Fenwick Street, North Carlton, with her mother Catherine, sister Ellen, a tailoress, and brother Joseph, a butcher and returned soldier whose story also appears on this page. In 1920 she married William Hayden Prime at the Erskine Presbyterian Church, then on the corner of Rathdowne and Grattan Streets, Carlton. The marriage notice in The Argus noted "Both late AIF". William Prime (Service Number 14419) had enlisted as a driver mechanic in February 1916 when he was 22 years eight months old. He embarked in June 1916 and by the end of that year was in France, attached to the 76th Field Ambulance. He was hospitalised briefly with scabies in March 1917, but otherwise appears to have survived physically unscathed. He was promoted several times and in June 1919 returned to England as Corporal Prime. He travelled home on the Suevic, disembarking in September and was discharged in October. He and Isabel were married four months later. Had they been engaged before the war? (Perhaps unlikely, given that she was eight years older than him.) Had they met in the appalling conditions of wartime France, where their experiences as nurse in a Casualty Clearing Station and ambulance driver created a strong bond?
A year after their marriage a son, Roland George, was born and again the notice in The Argus described the parents as "both late AIF". A second son was born in 1922 but lived only two days. Isabel lived to be 68, dying in 1953. For some time she and her husband had apparently been living in the Manchester Unity building in Swanston Street, perhaps in accommodation related to his employment as "superintendent". Her death notice refers to her son, her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren concluding "Late AANS 1st AIF". Her service was still obviously a source of great pride to her and to her family. Hayden, as his family called him, died in 1963.

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