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Eleanor Johnson

Nursing Sister – Anglo Boer War

- Queens South Africa Medal, no clasp, to Nursing Sister E. Johnson

Eleanor (also known as Ellen) Johnson was born in Marylebone, London in 1864 the daughter of sculptor Matthew Hawkins Johnson and his wife Helen, born Blogg. The family appear to have been affluent enough to retain the services of a Domestic Servant and the 1871 England census, which is where we meet Eleanor for the first time, shows the children being left in charge of the staff at 379 Euston Road, Marylebone.The eldest sibling Frank (9) was joined by Eleanor (6), Roger (4) and Mildred (3). Servants were Mary Smith the Housekeeper and Amelia Robinson.

Ten years later, at the time of the 1881 census, the family were still resident at the same address. Eleanor was a sixteen year old scholar and the family had expanded with the addition of Grace (6) and Owen (1).

Quite what decided Eleanor on a career in nursing is unknown but, with the dawn of the 1891 census she had parted company with her parents, had left the familiar territory of home and was a 26 year old Assistant Day Nurse at the Fulham Union Infirmary. The training hospital she was attached to was the Fulham and Hammersmith Infirmary.

Having cut her teeth on the prevailing medical conditions in late Victorian London where squalor and filth amongst the poorest of the poor were the order of the day, Johnson would have been well prepared for what was to come. With the outbreak of war between the Boers and the two Dutch speaking Republics in South Africa in October 1899 she enlisted with the Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service for service.

Nursing and in fact medical care of any description was primitive at the commencement of the conflict. The view held by officialdom in England was that the war would be over almost before it started and that the troops “would be home by Christmas”. This view was fallacious and costly in that the war was to drag on in its various guises for another 18 months. This caught the authorities napping and the initial batch of Doctors’ and Nurses who came out to South Africa was inadequate to cater for the very pressing needs that soon became apparent.

Johnson enlisted on May 15 1900 and was initially attached to the No. 1 General Hospital at Wynberg in the Cape. She was to serve there before moving on to the Base Hospital and Wynberg and then to No. 10 Stationary Hospital at Naauwpoort in the Karoo region of the Cape Colony. Boers were quite active in this area and there was always a constant stream of wounded, sick and injured soldiers to attend to.

Nurse, now Nursing Sister Johnson would have been hard at it working in difficult tented conditions (stationary hospitals were designed to be mobile unlike General hospital which were normally in requisitioned buildings) and in the extreme heat of the day and cold of the night. Medicines and other apparatus were often either none existent or always in short supply and it took courage, fortitude and patience to keep one’s chin up amidst these surroundings.

At the age of 34 Johnson was still single. For her service in the Boer War she was awarded the Queens South Africa Medal.

Hi Rory,

A very nice aquisition, thank you for sharing.

Paul