Nursing Sisters from Wolfville and Grand Pre = unsung heros

Women didn’t fight battles, but they were indispensible in wartime. From WWI three from Wolfville and Grand Pre stand out.

Not long ago Canada's ambassador to Greece laid a wreath to mark the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign and for the nurses who served and died in that segment of a long and deadly war.

Jessie Brown Jaggard is one of the names we read every Nov. 11. For decades she was listed as a Seminary grad with the name of Taggard, but not as a Wolfville native and not with her married name Jaggard.
Jenna Colclough, a classics student at Acadia, who assisted with archivist Wendy Robicheau’s sabbatical project ‘Acadia and the War.’ Jenna investigated the 14 nursing sisters to leave Acadia for casualty clearing stations, and stationary hospitals during WWI. Of the 14 who served two died during the war – one was Jessie.
Jessie was born in Wolfville in 1873. Her father, MLA John L. Brown, built what is now Alumni Hall. After graduating from Sem, she trained at Massachusetts General Hospital. She went on to become superintendent of a hospital near Philadelphia, married and had a son.

Jessie, her husband, Herbert, and teenage son were living in Elmira, New York when she decided in 1915 to go overseas with the Canadian Medical Corps.

The 3rd Canadian Stationary Hospital became operational on Lemnos Island. The hospital was part of a relief effort sent to help overcrowded Anzac medical services, which could not take the large influx of wounded soldiers from the Gallipoli campaign.

The Canadians sent to the island were not prepared to serve under extremely challenging conditions. Two nurses were required, for example, to change a patient’s wound dressing - one to change the dressing and one to fan out the flies of the wound. Heat and poor sanitary conditions contributed to the spread of disease.

Just four months after enlisting in London, England, Jessie succumbed to dysentery. She died in September 1915 with her son’s photo in her hand. She was 44.

From the memoir of Nursing Sister Kate Wilson, who was at Lemnos with Jessie: "Our very much loved matron Jaggard had taken ill. With little thought for herself and a keen interest in her nursing staff she carried on. So anxious would she become at night that many times she would go from hut to hut of her sleeping nurses, assuring herself that they were alright and not suffering from want of blankets when the nights were extra cold. Lying with the picture of her seventeen-year-old son smiling down at her, one night she closed her eyes for the last time and slept. In her service blue uniform…covered with a British flag…and carried by boys who knew and loved her, she was laid to rest. Forever she will remain in the hearts of those who were privileged to serve under her."

Jessie and her colleague Nursing Sister Mary Frances Munro were the first females to die in wartime while serving in the Canadian Army. They lie in Portianos Military Cemetery. Jessie's epitaph reads "What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me," which comes from a poem by Robert Browning.

Jessie, who was a cousin of Prime Minister Robert Borden, was remembered as a woman of strong and determined character, a zealous, earnest, assiduous and conscientious worker.

A Memorial Cross was sent to her husband and another to her mother, Mrs. John Lathrop Brown. Jessie’s story is featured briefly in the first episode of the 2014 Australian mini series on WWI, which is called ‘Anzac Girls’. 

Nursing Sisters Katherine (Kate) and Frances MacLatchy were also among the indispensible, but they returned home to Grand Pre.

Little is known of Fran’s war service during World War I. Her sister was matron at the Third Canadian General Hospital (No. 3 CGH) near Boulogne in France and in charge when Lt.-Col. John McCrae, who wrote In Flanders Fields, fell ill.

A niece of Prime Minister Borden, Kate graduated from the McGill University nursing program. When appointed matron, he wrote her, “I know of no one who possesses the necessary qualities more fully than you do – knowledge, experience, tact, pluck, resourcefulness and determination.”

With the rank of major and in command of 72 nursing sisters, she oversaw a hospital that covered 26 acres and had 1,560 beds. Wounded soldiers from the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Ypres and Passchendaele were sent there.

The late Jean Palmeter, who lived in North Grand Pre, spent months one winter copying Kate’s wartime diary war time out in longhand. It fills three foolscap pads.

On Nov. 11, 1918, Kate wrote that the weather was dull and at 8 a.m. 1,504 patients were on site. At 11 a.m. “the great news has just reached us. Intense excitement, bells ringing. Our bugles sounded ceasefire at 1:20 p.m.”

Later that day Kate recorded going into town and found flags flying and people cheering. “At 3 p.m. the whistles blew and guns were fired. Noise deafening for a while. Streets were crowded with soldiers of all nations. A happy day for France.”

Decorated by Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace, she was mentioned in dispatches twice for gallant and distinguished conduct in the field.

By the end of the war, No. 3 CGH had admitted 81,689 medical patients and 52,389 wounded; even more astonishing, it had carried out 11,395 operations with a death rate of less than one per cent.

Kate and Fran were among 2,500 nursing sisters who served overseas during World War I. She later joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps and served at Camp Hill Hospital.

In her later years, she and her sister were unofficial guides at the Covenanter Church in Grand Pre. They lived next door. Born in 1874, Kate died in 1969 at age 95, and is buried in the graveyard that surrounds the old church. Neither married. Fran outlived Kate.