Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Birth Registration details

Name:Alice Searl
Birth Date: Abt 1875
Birth Place: Terang, Victoria
Registration Year: 1875
Registration Place: Victoria, Australia
Father: William Holme Searl
Mother: Mary Ann Blanchard
Registration Number: 26256

Before the war

Their working lives brought Alice Searl and several of her siblings to East Melbourne in the first decades of the twentieth century. Alice and her sisters Mary Ann and Louisa (1101 and 1109 Hoddle St) were all nurses, and Matthew their brother (108 Powlett St) was a law clerk. Louisa lived in East Melbourne for many years working as a nurse. The death notice of her mother Mary Ann referred to Mary Ann being 'late of East Melbourne'.

Alice's English-born parents, William Holmes Searl (c1839-1908) and Mary Ann (nee Blanchard, c 1841-1915) brought up their large family in Terang, Victoria. William Searl's arrival in the colonies is unclear but Mary Ann disembarked in Geelong from London in 1863 after a long and dangerous voyage on the "Ivanhoe" (Terang Express, 16.4.1915), apparently without immediate family. She moved to the small town of Terang in southwestern Victoria where she married William in 1867. Mary Ann bore ten children (seven daughters, three sons) between 1869 and 1887, three of whom died in infancy. Alice, born in 1875, was the fifth child and third to live into childhood. Terang's population was 573 according to the 1881 census. 

Snippets of the family's life can be traced through the local Terang press. William bought town lots in busy Warrnambool in 1879 and 1880, took people to the Terang Court of Petty Sessions for abusive language in 1880 and 1890, and sought recompense from the local council for injury and damage to his cab (Camperdown Chronicle, 25.4.1879, 27.2.1880, 9.1.1890, 10.9.1887). The occupation on his probate application was 'gentleman'. The children won prizes and appeared in concerts at the Terang Primary School. Several children were associated with the local Band of Hope (temperance) and the Methodist Christian Endeavour Society. 

William died in 1908. His estate seems meagre for a gentleman, comprising land in Port Campbell valued at £18 and a watch (£2). Surprisingly also for a local gentleman and in contrast to his wife, his death was not noted in the local papers. 

Two of Alice's five surviving sisters married and lived in Western Australia (Hannah, married 1901; Lydia, married, 1907). The other three sisters - Mary Ann, Louisa and Alice - took up the profession of nursing. Louisa completed her training at the Castlemaine Hospital in 1909, then went to the Women's Hospital for specialised midwifery and gynaecology in 1910. Alice trained at the Children's Hospital, finishing in 1910. Both were registered with the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses Association in 1911. 

Alice was the only one of the three single sisters and two brothers to go on active service. 

War service

Alice Searl embarked for overseas with hundreds of troops and other members of the Australian Army Nursing Service on the 'Orsova' on 6 December 1916.

Alice had joined the AANS (Australian Military Forces) fifteen months earlier, on 19 October 1915. She nursed sick troops at military camps in northern Melbourne - the Showgrounds (Flemington) and Broadmeadows camps, and No 5  Australian General Hospital (Glenroy). 

The camp hospitals were established following public concern and agitation in autumn 1915 over the unhealthy and unsanitary conditions at the huge Broadmeadows site where thousands of troops from Victoria and NSW were living and training. There was lobbying for trained nurses to look after the troops but the Defence Department insisted that 'the camp is no place for nurses'. In autumn 1915 the deaths from pneumonia and meningitis of fit young AIF volunteers in the camps plus reports of the unkempt conditions in which they died forced Defence to capitulate to public opinion. Trained nurses were trialled at Flemington and Broadmeadows in August/September 1915 and subsequently also sent to the new healthier, camp at Seymour. 

So Alice Searl had been nursing sick troops since October 1915.

She understated her age on her official enlistment form dated 6 December 1916. She claimed to be 35, but in fact she was 41 - officially a year too old to enlist. 

Like many other nurses Alice was free of immediate family responsibilities when she enlisted. Her mother had died in April 1915 leaving an estate worth over  £1200 which may have given Alice some financial freedom (kit and other expenses on joining the AANS exceeded the government allowance). 

After a long seven week voyage on the 'Orsova', the nurses and troops disembarked in Plymouth on 17 February 1917. Five weeks later (likely filled with sightseeing), Searl and other Australian nurses sailed for France where they were attached for duty to 8 [British] General Hospital in Rouen from 1 March 1917.

They arrived towards the end of the notorious Somme winter of 1916-17. Rouen was a key evacuation area for British troops, who arrived in their thousands by train, ambulance and even barge. It was the location for around 25 hospitals (British, Canadian and later American) equipped with up to 20 000 beds. No 1 Australian General Hospital was located there from 1916 to early 1919. 

Most hospitals were set up on the Racecourse on Rouen's southern outskirts, but 8 BGH was situated in suburban Rouen. It comprised a large country house with huts and tents in its grounds, and was also the site of the 'Sick Sisters' Hospital'. Matron in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (Emma Maud MCarthy, an Australian) visited the hospital complex at least twice during Searl's time there in 1917. McCarthy noted that nursing sisters were housed variously in huts, tents and the building itself. She was well pleased with the Sick Sisters Hospital, describing it as 'well furnished, well arranged ... [with] every convenience - electric light, baths with hot and cold water, etc. The nurses look well cared for ...' (www.scarletfinders.co.uk/73.html).

The troops looked after by nursing staff at 8 BGH suffered from shell and bullet wounds, and/or gas poisoning. Those who died were buried in the war cemetery in Rouen. 

In late September 1917, Searl was transferred to 1 Australian General Hospital located on the other side of Rouen. 1 AGH was crammed into a portion of the Racecourse with its neighbours the 10 [British] General Hospital and 12 General Hospital (St Louis, USA). 1 AGH was equipped with just over 1 000 beds, though it could accommodate slightly more in 'crisis establishment' mode. Personnel numbers fluctuated  but averaged around 20 medical officers (doctors) and 80-90 nurses. 

Alice Searl was attached to 1 AGH until after the armistice in November 1918. During that time, she and other personnel treated thousands of sick and wounded, mainly British troops but also Australians and Americans and possibly German POWs who were housed locally. The conditions were difficult. Convoys of sick and wounded streamed in, at times straight from the battle zone rather than via a casualty clearing stations. Evacuated troops streamed out at the same time, creating logistical nightmares for medical officers, nurses, stretcher bearers and orderlies. The winter months were harsh, the temperature at night often below freezing. The nurses' quarters were cold and their hot water supplies limited throughout the winter and beyond. Air raids were alarming and necessitated trenches. In August-October 1918, both admissions and deaths escalated because of the final Allied offensive and the outbreak of influenza. Several times the hospital broke its own admissions and treatment records, and the number of patients exceeded even 'crisis establishment' figures. 

The toll on nursing staff can be seen in the hospital's war diary in the matron's monthly reports, despite her emphasis on the sisters' strength and capability in every circumstance.  

Alice Searl and her colleagues were not immune from illness, particularly influenza. She was admitted to hospital for several weeks in two successive winters, with influenza in January-February 1918, and with influenza and debility in October-November 1918. On the first occasion she was treated at the Sick Sisters Hospital at her old unit 8 BGH in Rouen, and on the second at 1 USA Presbyterian Hospital and the Sisters Convalescent Hospital in Entretat. The latter was housed in Villa Orphée, where the composer Offenbach had composed his popular 'Tales of Hoffman'. Sister Elsie Tranter, another Australian, loved the scenery and noted in her diary that Etretat was 'supposed to be the most beautiful spot in Normandy.' Searl's matron described it as 'a specially great boon to our nurses and at times when one is apparently "off colour" without being sick, a few days at that beautiful spot works wonders for them' (1 AGH, Unit Diary, June 1918). 

Towards the end of 1918 the nurses were exhausted and ill rather than 'off colour'. In her reports covering October and November 1918, Matron Cornwell wrote of the unrelenting pressure on her nurses, due largely to the influx of patients with severe influenza and the high mortality rate among them ('depressing'). Of November 1918 she wrote that her staff were 'severely taxed and the work in wards was very continuous - little time being allowed for rest'. About 20 nurses (almost a quarter of her staff) had had 'more or less severe' bouts of influenza, and several had been hospitalised. 

Alice was recovering from influenza in Etretat when the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. She returned to 1 AGH after being discharged from hospital on 14 November.

By the beginning of December 1918, 1 AGH was preparing to move out of France. The personnel evacuated patients, closed wards, collected the hospital equipment and then progressively transferred to England. Alice Searl was among the first sisters to leave, and was in England for Christmas 1918.

1 AGH moved to Sutton Veny on Salisbury Plain. Alice Searl was there only briefly if at all. On 8 January 1919, she re-embarked on the 'Orsova' - the same ship that had brought her to England two years earlier - with hundreds of troops being repatriated back to Australia. She arrived back in Australia on 27 February 1919. 

After her health was examined by a Medical Board, Searl was declared 'fit' and discharged from the AANS on 4 March 1919. 

After the war

Alice Searl was around 43 when she was discharged from the AANS, and single. After her discharge, she transferred to the AANS Reserve but from 1925 was inactive as a member. By that time, she was living overseas. 

In 1919, Alice's sister Louisa was nursing in Melbourne but instead of returning there or joining her other sisters in Perth, Alice went to the United States in 1920. The passenger list of SS Niagara shows she travelled from Sydney with three other nurses who had served in the AANS, including one with whom she had travelled on the Orsova and worked with in France at 1 AGH in Rouen. They may well have been attracted by friendships made there with American service personnel and/or by their tales of life in America.  

Alice arrived in the United States in 1920 and remained there almost continuously for at least 25 years, working as a nurse. Several members of her family came to visit and she herself travelled within the mainland States and to Honolulu. 

She nursed initially in Honolulu and then moved to Woodland in California. She was listed in the United States census in both 1930 and 1940 as a 'lodger', in the first instance with a married couple and their nephew on their farm, and in the second with an elderly woman. In both cases presumably she lived in as a private nurse/companion. She adjusted her age again, taking ten years off her birth date on the passenger list and census forms. She was also listed on the California Voters Register in 1938 and 1944 as a Republican.

Alice returned to Australia sometime after the death of her sister Mary in 1944. She joined her sisters Louisa Bruce (died 1956) and Lydia (1969) in Perth, living with them in Cargill Street, Victoria Park, in a house provided under the terms of the will of the husband of their sister Hannah who had died in 1911. 

Alice Searl died 'suddenly' on 19 August 1951, and was buried in the Wesleyan section of the Karrakatta Cemetery, Perth. 

 
References 
Kirsty Harris, More than Bombs and Bandages: Australian Army Nurses at Work in World War 1, Big Sky Publishing, 2011

Acknowledgments 
Information about Alice Searl's sisters and later life has kindly been provided by Margaret Masters and Judith Peterkin, granddaughters of Hannah Searl (married name Hannah Paterson), older sister to Alice Searl.

This biographical essay first appeared on the East Melbourne Historical Socety website (emhs.org.au).