General News
30 November, 2024
Veteran's Voices: Frances Emma Hines
Before Federation in 1901, Australia was not yet a nation.
While the political leaders of the soon-to-be Federated nation met to work out the details of the birth of Australia’s nationhood, on the other side of the Indian Ocean tensions were increasing between the British and the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
Each of the current six states was a colony of Britain which maintained its own defence forces.
In October 1899 the British Government requested Australian support and the states began to raise units to go to South Africa.
Consequently each state sent troops to fight as part of the British forces against the Boers - more than 16,000 in all.
For three years, about 60 Australian nurses scattered in small groups throughout South Africa worked for the Colonial Military Forces in British hospitals.
The nurses found themselves sent in different directions, posted wherever the need was greatest.
Frances (known by her colleagues as Fanny) Emma Hines was born in 1864 in Apsley, the fourth daughter of Francis Patrick Hines and his wife Eleanor Mary Caroline (née Brewer).
Her father named her Frances, the female version of his own name, Francis.
Her hometown was Inglewood, Loddon.
She attended Fairlight Private Girls School in East St Kilda (later the Clyde School) and then trained as a nurse at the Melbourne Hospital for Sick Children.
Fanny never married as she saw nursing as her vocation.
On March 10 1900, Fanny was one of 10 Victorian trained nurses who sailed from Melbourne for Cape Town aboard Euryalus, accompanying the 3rd Imperial Bushmen's Contingent.
The combined unit became 3rd Australian Bushmen Regiment, Rhodesian Field Force.
They disembarked at Beira in what was then Portuguese Mozambique.
Fanny then entrained for service in Rhodesia.
Troopers were very grateful that the sisters had embarked with them to care for sick and wounded comrades.
On arrival in South Africa they were offered the option of serving in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State or remaining with the contingent and travelling to Rhodesia.
They elected to remain with the 3rd Victorian Imperial Bushmen and join Sir Frederick Carrington's force in Rhodesia.
By the end of April, under the command of Sister Marianne Rawson, the Victorian nurses were distributed to different hospitals to assist medical teams.
The nurses were moved around to wherever there was the greatest need of their services.
They frequently worked only in pairs and sometimes alone, in terrible conditions.
More than half the troops who served in the Boer War died from disease rather than action against the Boers.
Hospitals were primitive and overcrowded with many men suffering from fever, dysentery and pneumonia.
As well as tending to the medical needs of her patients, like many other nurses Fanny also had to clean and to cook meals for the sick.
Nursing conditions were at best grim.
Supplies such as bedding, clothing, bandages, towels and medicines to nurse sick patients were non-existent or in very short supply.
Nurses often had to improvise bedding and bandages, sometimes using their own clothing to do so.
Fanny was sent to Enkeldoorn in what is now Zimbabwe to run a hospital on her own, caring for 26 patients at a time.
Fanny was working alone at Enkeldoorn.
This damaged her own health as she was quite isolated, with no possibility of assistance or relief and without sufficient nourishment, working in a time before antibiotics and modern medicine.
It was almost inevitable that, rundown, malnourished and debilitated due to her arduous service, she would fall ill.
Fanny died on August 7 1900 from pneumonia aggravated by malnutrition in an army hospital in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), aged 35 years.
She was buried with full military honors in West Park Cemetery and Crematorium, Bulawayo.
A marble cross and plinth were placed on her grave, number 541, funded by her fellow nursing sisters; the 1st Victorian Citizen Bushmen contingent; hospital staff; Major William Bubbin, Commander of Victoria's Citizen Bushmen; and Captain William McKnight.
She was the only Australian nurse to die in service in the Boer War.
On September 27 1901 a tablet in her memory was unveiled by Major-General Downes at Fairlight School, erected through subscriptions by her former classmates.
William Dobbin wrote: "Simply gave her life to the work of saving others".
Fanny's name is on the Australian Military Nurses Memorial of the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour in Canberra, at panel 3 in the Commemorative Area.
Hers is one of 589 names listed on this roll of honour for the South African conflict.
She is also commemorated on the Ballarat Boer War Memorial in Queen Victoria Square, the Apsley War Memorial, the Inglewood War Memorial, the Kapunda Dutton Park Memorial and the Bullwinkel Memorial.
Australia was Federated and became a Commonwealth during the Boer War.
As a result, what began as a colonial conflict ended with the raising of the Commonwealth Horse Battalions.
The Australian Army Medical Corps was formed a month after the signing of the Boer War Peace Accords.
With thanks: Sally Bertram, RSL Military History Library. Contact Sally at sj.bertram@hotmail.com or call 0409 351 940.