Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

A36 Troopship Boonah

The 1919 Influenza Epidemic

&  Essendon

 

by Marilyn Kenny 

 

 

The Boonah.  Source: Boonah Crisis - Wikipedia  18/4/2020

 

Essendon has a number of links with the Troopship Boonah that became the centre of a political and social storm during the 1919 influenza pandemic. The issues arising with cruise and cargo ships in the 2020 coronavirus pandemic echoes the crisis that developed around this vessel.

 

On 30 October 1918 HMAT Boonah, carrying over 900 volunteer soldiers and about 300 others, left Australia bound for the battlefields. It was the last troopship to leave. The Boonah  arrived in South Africa to find rejoicing that the war was over.  After staying eight days, refueling and taking on stores, on 25 November it started the return voyage to Australia. However the influenza epidemic which had been raging in Europe had reached this hemisphere and was spread to the ship either by the wharf labourers and/or by passengers and crew who had gone ashore and returned infected.

 

By the time the ship reached Freemantle in mid-December  there had been one death and a third of the troops were ill. On the close quarters of troopships it was impossible to adequately isolate infected patients and prevent the spread of infectious diseases, especially those borne by air or droplet particles. Australian troopships had already been the death-place of 358 soldiers because of infectious diseases. At Freemantle, after much delay, hundreds of Boonah soldiers, including those most seriously ill were taken the eight miles, by tug, under distressing weather conditions to the Woodman Point Quarantine Station.  They were roughly landed to be cared for by volunteer medical and nursing staff mainly recruited from the Wyreema, another troopship in port.

 

At Woodman Point 1919

 

General View of Woodman Point, Western Mail ,1903

 

Some buildings at Woodman Point Western, Argus 1905

 

At Woodman Point 1919. Source:  Friends of Woodman Point Recreation Camp.

 

Nurse Stella Morris had her account published in the Ballarat Star:

 

"Volunteers for quarantine duty were called and without delay we were disembarked and immediately dispatched to the Quarantine Station, Woodman’s Point, Fremantle. When we arrived here all that met our gaze was sand, scrub and tents, and we immediately set to work to prepare for the patients from the “Boonah.” The preparations by the quarantine authorities were most inadequate and altogether appalling. In the early morn the first batch of invalids were disembarked from the infected transport. Another sister and myself were detailed for duty on the jetty, and never as long as we live will we forget the conditions of these poor boys. That they were very ill, and a good few dying, was the thought that first impressed us as we helped to lift them on straw mattresses from the tug to the jetty. Big strong men they had been, some of them then in the last stages of this awful disease, with parched mouths and hacking coughs. Poor wan faces, poor human lives just passing slowly away. Pneumonia had supervened in most of the cases, and the labored breathing of some of these patients, as they lay in the tug on that hot summer’s day, is beyond description. Some of them were wet from the waves dashing over the tug in its voyage from the transport, others had been seasick. How thankful they were to get on land. The tug “Ivanhoe” made several trips before all the patients, were landed at the station, and by evening we had nearly 400 men, contacts and men stricken with the disease, to nurse back to health again".

 

"All the first-day and night we worked like Trojans, putting the men to bed, and struggling for nourishment for them. No fresh milk, brandy, or bovril, or any sustaining food had been provided by the authorities. It was heartbreaking for us, for we had nothing to give these men, only fruit drinks, and yet their gratitude for a nice clean bed, a sponge, and a lemon drink, was unlimited. Even though, a good few of these boys were dying, without any exaggeration, they were wonderfully cheerful. “This is a cow of a disease sister, isn’t it?” or, “Don’t worry over me, sister, I’ll see it through all right,” were remarks made smilingly to us by more than one. But many of those poor lads did not “see it through.” I was on night duty and witnessed "the passing out” of many of them".

 

"Every night had its death toll, for nearly 14 whole nights. We will never forget those nights. Just the moans of stricken patients, hacking perpetual coughs, wild mutterings of delirious patients and now and again the muffled steps of the sisters walking from bed to bed masked and gowned, an swinging hurricane lamps, which lit up our way, through sand, scrub, and tent ropes. This is what broke the stillness of those awful nights (it was hot day and night). It was not until the sixth day that the nursing staff contracted the disease. One after another the sisters went down to it and then four of the doctors. I was one of the last to contract it, and while I write some of our girls are still very ill".

 

 

Out of twenty sisters who first volunteered, 13 contracted the disease and two died. Another two nurses were to die and 27 soldiers. A bereaved father wrote that he considered his son murdered by the authorities. Those remaining on the Boonah were not allowed to disembark and conditions worsened with more succumbing to illness every day. Later soldiers spoke of living on the deck of this overcrowded, ill ventilated, dirty ship trying to dodge the disease.  Questions were asked in Parliament and mass meetings of returned soldiers threatened to storm and seize the ship. Complaints and demands for an inquiry continued for months. On December 20 the Boonah was allowed to proceed to Adelaide where another sixteen men were taken to quarantine.  The remainder were disembarked and eventually reached the other States by train in January 1919 and later.

 

At least ten Essendonians were aboard the Boonah, and four contracted the disease. These would have been among the first from our district to experience the Spanish flu.  These men spent up to a month at Woodman Point, but all recovered and were discharged in Melbourne.  

 

Those on the Boonah, with those who were admitted to Woodman Point marked *: 

 

*Archibald Sherwood Gully A 38 year old commercial traveller from Essendon. Married with two children. In quarantine hospital for 27 days from 12/12/18. Discharged from AIF 31/1/19.         

 

*Francis Vivian Kay Murray.  A   21 year old, single, agricultural student from Essendon. Discharged from AIF 18/2/19. 

 

*William Samfire.  An 18 year old, single, farmhand from Ascot Vale. At Woodman Point from 12/12/18.  Discharged from AIF 5/2/19. 

 

*Frederick Graeme Thomas A 28 year old, married, bank clerk from Moonee Ponds. Became ill on the Boonah on 5/12/18, 21 days Woodman Point. Discharged from AIF 4/2/19.

 

     Lt Harold Chapman. A 31 year old, married, clerk from Essendon.Formerly Area Officer

     for the 58A Senior Cadets.   Discharged from AIF 5/2/19

 

Military District (Victoria), Metropolitan Area Officers, Punch

(Melbourne, Vic. : 1900 - 1918; 1925), http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article129698826

 

     David Dononan. An 18 year old, groom, from Ascot Vale.  Discharged from AIF 4/2/19            

 

     Alexander Phillips. An 18 year old motor driver, from Kensington. Discharged from AIF                   1/2/19      

 

     George Henry Tointon. A 32 year old, single, house painter and decorator from

      Moonee Ponds.  Discharged from AIF 1/2/19  

 

Essendon Gazette August 1914

 

    Henry Fletcher Horace Watt. A 21 year old, single, bank clerk from Essendon.

    Discharged from AIF  1/2/19   

 

    Norman Gillies. A 33 year old, married, motor mechanic from Kensington.    

 

Photo from Gillies Family Tree on Ancestry. Norman on the left.

 

During 1919 Troopships continued to arrive at Freemantle with soldiers ill with influenza. Steamers from the east also later brought in the disease. There were few clean ships. The ill and their contacts were quarantined and treated at Woodman Point. There were many deaths. It is not known how many from the Essendon district were so affected. Often the only clue is a small stamp in the service record

 

 

Conditions at the station gradually improved though still seem to have been primitive. In April 1919 when Sir Henry Parker  politician and former Chief Justice in Western Australia was quarantined there, he passed some severe strictures on the careless process .

 

 

Sir Henry Parker (1846-1927). Photo:  Perth Mirror 1927

 

"We were put into a big shed, the floor of which was very uneven and dropped in places from a foot to eighteen inches.  The women were placed in one part and the men in another. It was very wet and stormy, and we had to walk about a hundred yards across sand and stumps to the dining room. In the day time this did not matter, but at night it was very uncomfortable travelling, particularly for the women. The first night there were no lights in the room when we returned from our evening meal, but eventually we got one lamp.  The sanitary arrangements were of the most primitive description".

 

Later they were moved to more comfortable dormitories. "We were each supplied with a towel; but apparently the Commonwealth draws the line at soap, as I saw none supplied. Shaving water was kindly supplied by the gentleman who cooked the potatoes".

 

Overseas visitors who were caught up in isolation there wrote of the prehistoric muddle and conditions that were disgraceful for a Government place.  By then the initially sparse staff had been supplemented by doctors and nurses recruited from the eastern states.

 

 

The rate that was offered to interstate nurses was higher than that for local nurses. This was approximately twice the rate received by a Staff Nurse during the war, about 6/- to 7/- a day or about 2 guineas a week. The inequality brought protest from local Nursing Associations who also pointed out that other staff such as doctors received a quarantine allowance and more than double their normal salary. 

 

One of these interstate nurses was Sister Edith Sommerville Thistlethwaite.

 

Edith was born in South Melbourne in 1877. She trained at the Melbourne Hospital 1905-1908 and became a member of the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses Association. In 1915 Edith applied to join the Australian Army Nursing Service. She sailed from Melbourne for Egypt on a troopship but was not officially enlisted until 16 March 1916 and was allocated to the 1st Australian General Hospital in Ismailia.  It was there that she served alongside Sister Elizabeth Fleming of Fernside Ascot Vale.  The Sisters both appear in a photograph taken in May –June 1916.

 

Edith went onto serve in England and France. Her letters home to her mother and sisters have been preserved at the Mitchell Library and have been transcribed. These tell of her experiences serving close to the front line, wearing tin hats and carrying gas masks. She writes of a relationship with a Digger, his unexplained fate, the deaths of soldiers she has known back home and of the death of fellow nurses. She also fell ill and was warded, the nurse becoming the patient.

 

Edith returned in 1918 as Matron of a Transport returning wounded and sick. Edith then served at Caulfield Hospital.  During the influenza epidemic she spent three months at Woodman Point Quarantine Station, WA. During her time there Edith took a number of photographs, many of which are reproduced here.  These appear on the Friends of Woodman Point social media page which also documents the history of the Station and the Boonah.

 

Some of the photos taken by Sister Thistlethwaite at Woodman Point.

Via Friends of Wooodman Point Recreation Camp

 

None of the first Essendonians who had contracted the disease seemed to suffer longer term effects, all living out a natural life span. Nurse Stella Morris married in 1920 at St Patricks in Ballarat.  She and her returned soldier husand, Percy Willis, had a unique wedding, she attired in military nursing sister's uniform, the red cape and white cap being in pleasing contrast to the sober khaki worn by the bridegroom and best man.  They had six children and Stella died at the age of 90.

 

The Boonah which started life as a German owned cargo ship had been seized by the Australian Government in 1914.  Post war it was sold back to a German shipping line. At the outbreak of World War 2 she was taken over by the German Navy and in 1940 torpedoed by the British Navy and sunk.

 

Edith S. Thistlethwaite returned safely and worked at MacLeod Military Hospital. She then undertook specialist training and took charge of Essendon's first Baby Health Centre 1923-1928 nurturing a new generation. After retiring from this position she worked privately as a Nursing Sister, her long life of service ending in 1960.

 

 Detail from the 1926 laying of the Foundation Stone of the Essendon Baby Health Centre in

Pascoe Vale Road, Edith in centre.  Photograph from The Argus.

 

 

References

Ancestry Family Trees - various

Butler A G Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918

Friends of Woodman Point Recreation Camp Facebook page

Greensborough Historical Society. World War 1 Project. Article on Edith via Victorian Collections

National Archives of Australia Service Records B2455, World War 1 Embarkation Rolls

Newspapers: Essendon Gazette, Ballarat Star, The Argus, Perth Mirror and multiple others.

Edith S. Thistlethwaite letters and papers, 1914-1923  MLMSS 7703/Box 6/Item Transcribed by Ros Bean for the State Library of New South Wales Mitchell Library

The Empire Called and I Answered web site

Wikipedia

 

©M Kenny 2020

 

See also HMT-Boonah-quarantined-at-Torrens-Island,-1919