Maud Bullock, Red Cross Commandant at 5 The Lawn

I came across a mention of Maud Bullock in a 1914 newspaper and decided to research her life. There are a number of mentions of her in the newspapers, and I was also pleased to find that a relative had put up photos of her on a family tree on the Ancestry subscription database. What I found only hints, of course, at her experiences.

Maud Eleanor Bullock was baptised in 1868 in Wandsworth, daughter of the Rev. James George Bullock.

Her mother Mary Helena died 3 April 1900, at 5 Grosvenor Gardens, St Leonards, but of Clarens, Switzerland (states the probate entry). Maud’s father had been the English chaplain at Clarens-Montreux since 1890, but he had exchanged livings with the Rev. A. Vandeleur Carden of St Andrew’s, Hastings (Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 28 April 1900).

In the 1901 census the father was living with daughters Gertrude and Mary at 12 Holmesdale Gardens, Hastings, and died there in 1907. Maud in the 1901 census was one of 13 nurses residing at Chesterfield Hospital.

The sisters probably bought 5 The Lawn in 1907, following the death of the widow of General Boyd, when it was put up for auction with vacant possession as advertised in the newspapers. We know they owned it as Gertrude and Maud are shown as joint owners in the 1910 parochial electoral registers, for local elections. In the 1911 census, 5 The Lawn was stated to have 11 rooms and its occupants were as follows:

Maud Eleanor Bullock, head, 42, S[ingle], three years private means/ trained hospital nurse, private means, Territorial Force Nursing Service “sister”, born London NK

Gertrude Mabel Bullock, sister, 37, S, private means, born Colchester Essex

Mary Evelyn Bullock, sister, 35, S, private means, born London NK

Ellen Rebecca Chase, servant, 32, S, maid (general servant), born Brandon Norfolk

NK means that the exact neighbourhood was not known. Gertrude became a nun and died in 1939 at Grahamstown, South Africa. Mary Evelyn was a talented watercolourist, lived in Icklesham in 1924, and died in 1966 at Rye.

In October 1912 the First Balkan War broke out, and we have, I believe, the first mention of Maud in the newspapers. An alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro were fighting against the Ottoman Empire, and by the war’s end in May 1913 had captured much territory from the Empire. The 9 November 1912 issue of the Hastings Observer reported:

OFF TO THE FRONT. ST LEONARDS RED CROSS NURSE GOING TO MONTENEGRO.

Our town is shortly to be represented in the ranks of those who minister to sufferers by the War in Eastern Europe.

The Red Cross movement in Hastings and St Leonards should receive additional impetus from the fact that the honour of acceptance as a nurse in the hospitals in Montenegro has fallen to Miss Bullock, of The Lawn, St Leonards, who was lately appointed Commandant of Sussex 4 of the Red Cross, and who applied to be allowed to go to the succour of the wounded.

Miss Bullock has had eleven years’ experience of hospital work, and is, of course, a trained nurse. She will leave next Monday, with a Red Cross Detachment, for Antivari.

Antivari was a seaport on the Adriatic, now called Bar, in Montenegro. The 16 November issue reported that the party had left on the 8.35 pm train from Charing Cross. It consisted of six nurses, led by Sister Ripley of the London Hospital, and a squad of orderlies. Other parties were meant to follow this initial one. Maud was reported to have been a Ward Sister for eight years, was a registered lecturer for the Red Cross, and as the local Commandant was closely involved in training of the local VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment). She was given a ‘hearty send-off’ at Warrior Square station on her way to join the others in London by a uniformed section of the VAD. She had been given a small tea canteen as a parting gift.

At Charing Cross a large crowd also saw the party off. They included Mrs Ebden, vice-president of the Hastings and St Leonards Division of the Red Cross, who had travelled from Cheshire. The Ebdens lived at what is now the main premises of Claremont School on the A21, at Ebden’s Hill. Mrs Ebden told the newspaper’s reporter that the local Division was planning to send parcels to help, with items such as day and night shirts, and that these could be received by the Hon. Secretary, Miss Greech, of 25 Albany Road.

We are told that the train’s departure was

 A moving spectacle, and amid last farewells, and the cheering of a dense crowd of people, the train moved slowly out of the station, and was lost to sight in the darkness.

The 26 April 1913 issue of the Hastings Observer reported on the local division’s AGM, and included the comment that they wished for her second safe return. Sir Frederick Treves, a surgeon, had chosen the initial six nurses from a large number of applicants. Treves was the doctor portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the 1980 film The Elephant Man, about Joseph Merrick. The 1 November 1913 issue of the Bexhill on Sea Observer reported on a meeting of the local Red Cross at the Sackville Hotel, Bexhill, and said that a short address was given by Miss Maud Bullock, ‘who spoke on her experience of Red Cross work in the Balkan War.’ After Colonel McGill spoke about the 250 staff who went out as volunteers, ‘Miss Bullock followed with a recital of her experiences, which, Admiral Davis observed, included an attack of typhoid fever, and were therefore not altogether pleasant. Miss Bullock, however, disclaimed any intention of relating any blood-curdling stories, and it was about the humorous side of her adventures that she told with much wit and point.’

I next found Maud in the Hastings Observer’s 8 August 1914 issue, days after the beginning of the First World War, when she wrote a letter.

To the Editor of the Observer. SIR. – May I, through the medium of the “Observer”, make known the following needs of the Hastings Branch of the British Red Cross Society: — Old linen, old cotton sheets, lint, gauze, bandages, men’s socks and stockings, and cotton shirts, and last, but not least, gifts of money ?

Any of these will be gratefully received between the hours of one and three p.m. at the under-mentioned address,

Yours truly,

MAUD BULLOCK

Commandant 4 Sussex Hastings and St Leonards Red Cross

5, The Lawn, St Leonards.

The next mention I found was in the Hastings Observer, 3 April 1915, where Maud was about to go to Serbia as a volunteer nurse, taking with her medical stores. Contributions were welcome at 5 The Lawn. In the 20^th May 1916 issue, at the AGM of the Red Cross’ Hastings Division in the Town Hall’s Council chambers, Maud gave a talk about her experiences as a member of Lady Paget’s Unit in Serbia. Unfortunately no details were given, and I know nothing more of what she went through. She was presumably the ‘Bullock’ listed as one of 27 nurses who had arrived at London from Serbia, as part of Lady Paget’s unit, as reported in The British Journal of Nursing, 15 April 1916. Lady Paget was Dame Margaret Leila Wemyss Paget (1881-1958), whose husband was the British Minister to Serbia at the time of the First Balkan War. In that war, as well as in World War I, Lady Paget worked tirelessly to provide medical aid to Serbia.

In the 1920 electoral register, at 51 Pevensey Road, Maud and her sister Mary (the artist) were the only listed voters. They were not there in the 1921 census, when the house consisted of four households. I could not identify them elsewhere in that census.

After that the trail goes cold until shipping records tell us that Maud was a passenger on the SS Moreton Bay liner, which arrived on the 15 July 1937 at Southampton. The ship had sailed via Brisbane and Colombo but Maud had embarked at Port Said, age 68, to stay at Quinton Rectory, Stratford on Avon, home duties, permanent residence Palestine. Quinton was the parish of her youngest brother, the Rev. George Godfrey Ashwin Bullock.

She died on the 28 February 1945 in hospital at Jerusalem, age 76, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery.