Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Ethel Gillingham was born at Yeovil Newtown Geelong in 1884 to ER and Henrietta (White) Gillingham.

Ethel undertook 3 years nursing training at Colac Hospital and a further one year at Wangaratta Hospital for surgical experience.

Ethel travelled to England in July 1914 with the intention of taking a pleasure trip.  When the ship in which she was travelling reached the Mediterranean, those on board heard the news that England had declared war on Germany.

On her arrival, Ethel enlisted as a Nursing Sister with the British Red Cross in October 1914 and served with the 3rd Southern General Auxiliary Hospital, Milton Hill, Steventon, Berkshire in the period from October 1914 to April 1915.

Sister Gillingham then joined the 2nd British Red Cross Serbian Mission at Vrnjacka Banja in Serbia and served with that Unit from May 1915 to February 1916.  This Mission operated a hospital treating wounded soldiers and civilians suffering from the typhus epidemic brought to Serbia by Austria-Hungarian Prisoners of War, captured by the Serbian Army in fighting in 1914.

Ethel and her companions including a number of other Australian Doctors and nurses were captured by the invading German and Austrian-Hungarian troops in November 1915 and fortunately were repatriated to Britain in February 1916. The repatriation was subject to providing 3 months of nursing.  22 persons accepted that offer but were subject to a harsh winter with poor accommodation and food.

The return journey was ‘full of horrors and we were packed like beasts on the trucks”.  After travelling via Budapest and Vienna the group was advised they were to be exchanged for Austrian prisoners.  They then traveled through Switzerland and France to return to England.

One of the other persons in Serbia was Dr Mary De Garis who first female doctor in Geelong.

Ethel later cabled her sister, Mrs ED Wilcox of Aphrasia Street Newtown Geelong that she has arrived in London and is well.

Ethel resumed nursing at the Red Cross Hospital in Egypt from June 1916 until 1917. It was in Egypt that she met her husband, Capt Theo Richard (Dick) Evans of Parkville Melbourne and they were married on 22 September 1917.

Her final military service was at Millbay VAD Hospital in Plymouth England from July to October 1918.

Ethel and Dick Evans had 3 children.

After the war, Ethel was awarded the Serbian Cross of Mercy and in 1985 a Memorial was erected by the residents of Vrnjacka Banja Serbia near one of the spa houses to the British Medical Missions.  The inscription reads “ in memory of the humanity of the British women - doctors and nurses who treated Serbian soldiers and the people of Vrnjacka Banja in the hospitals here in 1915.  From the people of Vrnjacka Banja October 1985.

Further in October 2024, the Serbian Post Office released a series of postage stamps to again acknowledge the Serbian Government’s appreciation of the service of Australian doctors and nurses during WWI.  Sister Ethel Gillingham has her own postage stamp featuring a stylised impression, from a photograph of her.

Gillingham Lane, Newtown was named in honour of her.

Courtesy of Stephen Yewdall

Ancestry Family Tree

Ethel May Gillingham - 1884–1952
Birth 7 AUG 1884 • Geelong, Victoria, Australia

Death 3 FEB 1952 • Repatriation General Hosital, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia