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Recollections
Craiglockhart
Military Hospital
1945 |
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Recollections
1.
Edward Thomson
Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland
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Thank you to
Edward
Thomson for sending me several recollections of Edinburgh in earlier
days.
Here, Ed has sent a photograph of an Aunt that he never met.
Ed wrote: |
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"The Aunt I Never Knew"
"Looking
through the Thomson archives last week I found this interesting
photo, if only for the uniform.
It is of an Aunt
I never met.
Aunt Louise
©
From stories related
by my late Grandmother and my Father (way back in the
1950s) I submit
this for your interest.
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Trained as a Nurse
"Louise Thomson was born at 3
Washington Lane Dalry Road in 1893 ad was a pupil at Tynecastle
School until 1908 .
The Family moved to 105 Princes
Street Perth, returning to Edinburgh at the start of WWI.
Louise had trained as a Nurse at
the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and Chalmers Hospital so it was
natural for her to join the Red Cross and nurse wounded troops." |
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Siegfried Sassoon
"She became a Staff Nurse at
Craiglockhart Military Hospital (where the photo was taken) - a
former Convent which is now occupied by Napier University.
[But see 'Recollections 2'
below.]
According to my late Grandmother,
Louise was allocated to look after the famous WWI poet Siegfried
Sassoon who was suffering from shellshock. Sassoon became world-
famous with his Wartime writings." |
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Emigration to Australia
"After the War she continued with
a Nursing career until 1924 when she was married to an engineer
William Hird from Workington Cumbria who was working for Bruce
Peebles at Pilton.
They decided to try their luck in
Australia and went out to Sydney in August 1925 never to return to
the U.K."
They started a fruit farm at a
hamlet called Mount White in N.S.W. but until the outbreak of WWII
were pretty unsuccessful. They eventually became suppliers of
peaches and fruit for canning to the Military.
They also sent food parcels to my
Grandmother at 13 Caledonian Place Dalry Road.
Aunt Louise died in 1953 aged
61." |
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Ed Thomson,
Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland: November 29, 2006 |
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Recollections
2.
Bob Wyllie
Brussels, Belgium |
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Bob Wyllie
wrote: |
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1880s -
Hydropathic Institute
"Craiglockhart Military Hospital was, in
fact, built as a Hydropathic Institute for the Craiglockhart
Hydropathic Company in the 1880s.
This was at a time
when there was a
craze for water treatments in luxurious surroundings such as
Dunblane Hydro and Peebles Hydro."
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1916 -
Military Hospital
"The building continued to be used
as a Hydropathic Institute until the First World War.
then, between 1916 and 1919, it was used as a military psychiatric
hospital for the treatment of shell-shocked officers."
[Wikipedia]
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Convent
"After
the end of the First World War, the military moved out and the
building became the convent that Ed mentions above." |
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Bob Wyllie, Brussels, Belgium: August 25, 2008 |
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