Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Irish-born Richard Gordon arrived in Victoria as a 17 year old labourer on the Great Britain in 1865, but it was not until 1886 that he married Elizabeth née Morris. Their older son Richard Arthur was born in 1887, their only daughter Ruby Elizabeth in 1892 and a second son James Norwood in 1898. At this time the family was living at 142 Amess Street, but by 1901 had moved to a single-fronted house at 533 Nicholson Street, between Fenwick and Macpherson Streets. Richard's occupation was cab owner. The family remained at this address for some 20 years but from 1914 onwards Richard, who would then have been 65, described himself as being of independent means. Interestingly, Ruby appears twice on the 1914 electoral roll, at her family address but also at the Melbourne Hospital, where she had been working for four years.1Many of the nurses with links to Carlton were in their thirties, but Ruby was only 25 when she enlisted on 28 June 1918. She embarked on the Wiltshire in November 1918 and disembarked a month later at Bombay. She served at Deccan War Hospital in Poona (now Pune). Initially quite small, it had been enlarged to 1200 beds to accommodate patients from Mesopotamia (Iraq) and specialised in the treatment of tropical diseases. Later she was transferred to King George's War Hospital in the same city. In November 1919, just a little less than a year after she had arrived in India, she sailed for home on the Charon. Her father was officially notified that she would travel overland from Fremantle and proceed directly to the Nurses' Hostel in the Grand (now Windsor) Hotel, Spring Street, Melbourne. She duly arrived in January 1920 and was discharged the following month.

Ruby's older brother Richard (service number 25984) also served in World War 1. He enlisted on 25 February 1916 when he was 28, embarked on the Orsova and arrived in Plymouth in August of that same year. By March 1917 he was in France. He attained the rank of temporary corporal and returned to Australia on the Konig Frederich August in August 1919, just three years after his departure.

By 1921 the family had moved to 47 Arnold Street, Princes Hill (now demolished). Over the next decade Ruby's brothers married and left the family home but she remained there until the deaths of her father, at the age 89 in 1937, and her mother four years later. By 1943 Ruby was living with her brother Richard and his wife Ruby Myrtle in Rosemont Avenue, Surrey Hills and was still a nurse. She was then 51 and the rest of her life must have seemed quite predictable. But the 1949 electoral roll shows Richard and Ruby Myrtle Gordon still at that address together with Elizabeth Ruby Hood, an inspector, and Samuel Hood, government employee.

In December 1958, when she would have been 66, Ruby made an application to the Repatriation Department for "benefits" related to her service. Unfortunately her record does not show the reply to her request. In the same year she was living at 23 Queen Street, Frankston and again stating her occupation as nurse. She later moved to Brotherhood of St Lawrence accommodation at Carrum Downs and died there in 1972 at the age of eighty.

Notes and References:
1 Ruby was registered at birth as Elizabeth Ruby but the names are often reversed. Her service record is headed Ruby Elizabeth and this is how she appears on the electoral rolls while her surname was Gordon. On later electoral rolls and on her entry in the death index she appears as Elizabeth Ruby Hood.

http://www.cchg.asn.au/greatwar.html