Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Daughter of Alfred Finney SHERRIFF and Maria Anne nee AUCHETTO

Married Archibald Bertram DUNCAN

Late of Chelsea, Vic.

Mary Alice Sherriff was a three-year trained nurse courtesy of the Warragul Hospital.  She had been a member of the Australian Army Nursing Service (A.A.N.S.) prior to enlistment.  The A.A.N.S. was an Australian Army Reserve unit which provided a pool of trained civilian nurses who volunteered for military service during wartime.  During World War I, more than 2,286 women joined the AANS AIF for overseas service and Mary was one of them.  She joined the British India Nursing Service on 27 February 1918.

Mary made it to Bombay but her duty was cut into when she contracted small-pox.  She did however recover and served at Colaba War Hospital in Bombay, then the Station Hospital of Barrackpore followed by the hill station Deolali. (Deolali transit camp was a transit camp for British troops, notorious for its unpleasant environment, boredom, and the psychological problems of soldiers that passed through it.  Its name is the origin of the phrase "gone doolally" or "doolally tap", a phrase meaning to 'lose one's mind'.  'Tap' may refer to the Urdu word tap, meaning a malarial fever: source Wikipedia)

Mary was discharged from the British India Nursing Service on 6 September 1920.  Her war involved illness, adventure and possibly a certain satisfaction from practising her profession.

Upon discharge for a spinster of thirty, it is likely that she was then looking for a husband.  Mary found one in Archie Duncan ten years her junior.  Despite his lack of qualifications (it was noted he hadn’t served an apprenticeship on his military record) and his age, Mary married him in 1922.  The fact that she had given birth to their first child in 1921 may have had a lot to do with this.  Additionally, suitable men were in short supply cut down as they were by the war.

Mary and Archie quickly had four more children.  By 1929 their family of three boys and two girls was complete.  By 1931 they had settled in Chelsea.

Archie disappeared from his young family’s daily life at various times due to illness.  Mary continued to live in the family home in Chelsea until she went to a nursing home in Edithvale dying in 1984.

Mary achieved the great age of 93 compared to her husband Archie’s death at 57.  Additionally, Mary had the satisfaction of overseas travel in her 20’s and was a trained professional which may have seemed an unlikely future to a working-class country girl who was one of eight children.

Archie and Mary were part of a generation who suffered wide-spread deprivation and as a result, had expectations of life that were muted and realistic.