STAFF NURSE DOROTHY MORTIMER WATSON, TERRITORIAL FORCE NURSING SERVICE.

February 23, 2019

STAFF NURSE DOROTHY MORTIMER WATSON, TERRITORIAL FORCE NURSING SERVICE. DIED 13th MARCH 1917 AGED 29 YEARS.

Dorothy Watson was born in Ilkley on the 29th December 1887 the daughter of Christopher and Mary Watson. Her father was a land agent who lived in a house known as The Rocks on Crossbeck Road where he lived with his wife and three children.

When Dorothy's was just 9 years old her father died and the family was left in rather straightened circumstances. In the days before the development of the welfare state the sudden loss of a bread winner could have dire consequences for families. At best it might appeal for help to relatives or charitable institutions, but at worst it could mean an application to the workhouse. Dorothy was fortunate, although, she may not have felt this at the time, because her father had been a freemason, the family could appeal to that body for charitable relief. For young Dorothy, however, this meant that she would be sent away to board at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Battersea, London.

The Masonic School catered for the daughters of Freemasons whose families had fallen on hard times and offered a solid and respectable education. Unusually, even for those times, the school actively discouraged pupils from returning home for holidays or visits by family members. Dorothy remained at the school for eight years during which time it appears that her mother also died. At 17 years of age she left The Royal Masonic and returned home to Yorkshire where she placed under the guardianship of Herbert Illingworth, a distant uncle who lived in Harrogate. Herbert had found her a position in a local office but clearly this was not to Dorothy's taste and instead she enrolled as a trainee nurse at Harrogate General Hospital. Upon completion of her training she remained at the hospital until the beginning of the war.

Clearly wishing to 'do her bit' for the war effort Dorothy applied to join the Territorial Force Nursing Service. Entry standards to this unit were extremely high and they only took the very best nurses, but she was obviously of the highest calibre, indeed a report describes Dorothy as "....a thoroughly good surgical nurse, reliable and trustworthy. Kind and tactful with her patients". To begin with she worked at the No2 Northern General Military Hospital in Leeds but later transferred to the East Leeds Military Hospital on Beckett Street.

In mid 1916 Dorothy took the decision to serve as a nurse overseas and on the 10th September 1916 she arrived on the island of Malta. At that time the island had a number of military hospitals who dealt with wounded soldiers from both the campaigns in the Middle East and from the Salonika Front. She was appointed to the Hospital of St John in Sliema which dealt primarily with chronic and acute cases of enteritis an inflammation of the stomach lining. It was in March 1917 that Dorothy contracted measles which developed into toxemia. In the days before antibiotics this was serious and difficult to treat and sadly she failed to respond and died on the 13th March 1917.

Thoughtful to the end and in preparation for the possibility of her death, Dorothy had left a letter with the wife of her guardian (shown below) in which she outlined how she wanted her few possessions to be distributed amongst her family and friends.

Dorothy Watson lies in the British Military Cemetery at Pieta, Malta but she does not have a Commonwealth War graves headstone. Instead she has a stone cross paid for by staff at the Hospital of St John which is perhaps an indication of the high esteem in which she was held. She is also remembered on the war memorial in Harrogate, but sadly not in Ilkley, the town of her birth.