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Australia

Daughter of Thomas PETERS and Martha Annie nee ELIX

Awarded Royal Red Cross 2nd Class
Date of Commonwealth of Australia Gazette: 21 September 1916
Location in Commonwealth of Australia Gazette: Page 2621, position 9
Date of London Gazette: 2 May 1916
Location in London Gazette: Page 4429, position 3

Trained at Adelaide Hospital
Enlisted 21 November 1914 in Cairo, Egypt
Embarked 27 November 1914
Present at Gallipoli landing on Indian Hospital ship 'Gascon'. Enlisted in South Australia and on arrival in Egypt was detailed to duty on the 'H.S. Gascon' to attend Gallipoli landing along with 6 other AIF Sisters.
Served in Egypt and France
Promoted to Sister 01 December 1915
Mentioned in despatches 01 March 1916 London Gazette 29569/5097 29632/5487
Resigned appointment due to marriage in UK 01 October 1917
Resided at 1a William St., Ringwood, Vic. in 1967
Married Norman Francis WILKINSON
Died 09 May 1974 in Melbourne, Vic.

Border Watch (Mount Gambier, SA : 1861 - 1954)Saturday 28 November 1914 - Page 2

Army Nurses.-Miss Ethel Peters, daughter of Mr. T. Peters, railway guard at Mount Gambler, who has been a nurse in the Adelaide hospital, and in charge of the Home for Consumptives, has been accepted as a nurse for a stationary hospital for wounded soldiers in France. We are informed that 28 nurses from the Adelaide hospital have been accepted as Red Cross nurses in connection with the present war.

Border Watch (Mount Gambier, SA : 1861 - 1954)Wednesday 9 May 1917 - Page 2

Engagement.-The following engagement was announced in the "British Australasian" (London)-"An Australian engagement of interest recently announced in London, was that of Priv. Norman Wilkinson, who is a son of Dr. and Mrs. J. F. Wilkinson, of Melbourne, and is attached to the 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station in France, and Sister Ethel Alice Peters of Mount Gambier, S.A., who is at the 2nd Australian General Clearing Hospital, Boulogne, and was recently awarded the Royal Red Cross."

(Sister Peters is the second, daughter of Mr. T. Peters, a guard at the local railway station.)

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957)Saturday 13 October 1917 - Page 13

MARRIAGES.

WILKINSON- PETERS. — On the 1st October, at Cambridge, England, Lieutenant Norman Francis Wilkinson, second son of Dr. and Mrs. J. F. Wilkinson, East Melbourne, to Sister Ethel Peters, R.R.C., second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peters, Mount Gambier, South Australia.

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957)Saturday 20 July 1918 - Page 13

WILKINSON (nee Ethel Peters).—On the 6th July, at Cambridge, England, to Lieut. and Mrs. Norman F. Wilkinson—a son.

Border Watch (Mount Gambier, SA : 1861 - 1954)Friday 28 February 1919 - Page 3

MRS. N. WILKINSON (SISTER E. PETERS) WELCOMED.

On Wednesday night Mrs. N. Wilkinson (Sister Ethel Peters), a daughter of Mr. Thos. Peters, railway guard, Mount Gambier, returned home from the war, where she served for three years as a nurse. During her absence she was married to Lieut Norman Wilkinson, of Toorak, Melbourne, who was also on National service, and now, having returned to Australia, she lost no time in coming to Mount Gambier to see her parents and friends, and she brought her handsome little baby boy with her.

She was met at the railway station by the Mayor, the Ven. Archdeacon Samwell, and Mrs, J. J. Lawrie (Vice-President of the Cheer-up Society), who warmly welcomed her back to Mount Gambier. The combined band played several lively selections of welcome.

Mrs. Wilkinson left South Australia with the first batch of young nurses who offered their services to aid the wounded Australian soldiers. She left Adelaide in November, 1914, for Egypt. When the Australian soldiers were ordered to Gallipoli the nurses were also sent there, and Nurse Peters, with the others, was present at the historic landing there in April, 1915. She served all through that fateful campaign, and when the British forces evacuated Gallipoli the nurses were sent with them to France. Nurse Peters was decorated with the Royal Red Cross for her distinguished service on Gallipoli. While in France she was married to Lieut Norman Wilkinson, son of Dr. Wilkinson, of Toorak, Melbourne, and in October, 1917, after three years of strenuous work, she resigned.

Mrs. Wilkinson, although she bears traces of the severe service she has rendered to Australia and the Empire, is in excellent health. It may be mentioned that Lieut. Wilkinson was some month ago decorated by the Belgian authorities with the Croix de Guerre.

Mrs. Wilkinson Entertained by the Red Cross. 

At the usual Thursday afternoon meeting of the Mount Gambier Red Cross Society, in the supper room of the Caledonian Hall, a pleasing function took place, when Mrs. Wilkinson (Nurse Peters) was entertained at afternoon tea. She had only arrived by train the evening before. The President of the Red Cross Society (Mrs. G. E Truman, Mayoress), supported by Mesdames J. H. Nield and J. J. Lawrie, extended her a welcome, which was given in a very hearty manner by all present singing "For she is a jolly good fellow," and giving three ringing cheers. The afternoon tea was provided by Mesdames, A. F. Laurie, J. H. Sheppard, and J. M. Carozzi.

The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954)Friday 26 April 1940 - Page 25

NURSES' RE-UNION LUNCHEON

SEVENTY-FIVE returned nurses, many of them in their white uniforms and red capes, took part in the annual re-union luncheon at the Returned Soldiers' Club after yesterday's march. On the previous day many of them had journeyed many miles by train or car to be present, and to renew old friendships, and one of their number, Miss Vickery, flew from Mount Gambier for the function.

Vivid memories of Anzac morning 25 years ago were recalled by Mrs. E. J. Murray, of Somerton, who, as Sister Tucker, a Tasmanian, was one of the six Australian nurses on the Gascon, the hospital ship which accompanied the troops to the landing. The only South Australian nurse in the band, then Sister Ethel Peters, is now Mrs. Wilkinson, and lives in Victoria.

''On the Gascon were an English matron, we six Australian sisters, Indian and Anglo-Indian doctors, and Indian orderlies.,' said Mrs. Murray. 'We arrived at the Cove at 6 am., and were soon to busy to see anything of what was happening on shore. Wounded soldiers, some of them soaked to the skin through walking in the water, were being brought back to us in the same flat-bottomed boats in which they had left the troopship for the land so short a time before, and it was not long before we had more than 500 patients to attend to. With so few of us to tend them, we had almost 100 patients each.