Emily Dilnot (1887­–1984) worked at Mena House Hospital, Simpson St, East Melbourne from 1912 until 1916 when she travelled to England and enlisted in the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. She attended nearby St Peter’s Eastern Hill Church of England, where she is commemorated on an honour board as a parishioner on active service during the 1914–18 war.

**

Emily Dilnot, born in Hamilton, Victoria was the third of five children (3d, 2s) belonging to George Dilnot (1852­–1892) and his wife Frances Emily (1852-1937), nee Wallis.

Her parents George and Frances had married in 1881 and come to Hamilton via Sydney from London in 1882. Born in Kent to a faming family, George had worked with a firm of London merchants as a commercial traveller (Hamilton Spectator, 1.12.1892, p3). His wife already had a cousin in Melbourne, Alexander Wallis, the inaugural secretary of the colony’s department of agriculture (R. Wright, 'Wallis, Alexander Robert (1848–1928)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wallis-alexander-robert-13235/text5915, accessed online 24 July 2016.)

After a brief period in Sandhurst (Bendigo) and Melbourne, and the birth of their first child Frances Harriet in 1883, the family moved to Hamilton, centre of the prosperous Western District. George and Frances were in their early thirties. An accountant by profession, George quickly made a name for himself as a businessman with a range of interests, particularly in brewing and hotels. He traded land and stock for others and himself, managed deceased and insolvent estates, and ran an auction house. He was secretary of the bowling club and a member of the Masonic Lodge. His business acumen was considerabe: it was said that had he been in charge of rabbit extermination in the district, ‘the success would be phenomenal, as the rabbits now infecting the lands as a nuisance would become a source of revenue’ (Leader [Melbourne], 2.8.1892, p8). Dilnot was not necessarily popular (for example, he fenced off access to common grazing ground) but he was successful.

George and Frances added to the family: Ethel in 1885, Emily in 1887, Sydney George in 1889, Arthur Henry in 1890. They lived in a large and commodious house in Gray St, Hamilton, full of ‘handsome and well-kept furniture’ (Hamilton Spectator, 19.1.1893, p2).

However the Dilnot family circumstances changed abruptly when George died suddenly at the end of November 1892 (Hamilton Spectator, 1.12.1892, p3). He was forty. Frances was suddenly a widow with five children under 9. She quickly applied to administer his estate and decided to take the family back to England. She put the house and its contents on the market in January 1893, but before all the sales had been finalised, she and her five children had sailed for England (Australasian, 11.2.1893, p27), for the support and consolation of George’s family in Herne, Kent.

Emily Dilnot was just six years old when this upheaval happened.

More – worse ­– was on the doorstep. Within weeks of the family’s arrival in England, two of Frances’s children died: Sydney (4) of meningitis in Herne on 26 May, and a month later, Ethel (8) of tubercular meningitis in Croydon, Surrey (where Dilnot relations also lived) (Hamilton Spectator, 6.7.1893, p2, 10.8.1893, p2).

Within a matter of months, the successful Dilnot family of two parents and five children had been reduced to a mother and three children aged between ten and three.

George’s parents and several siblings still lived in Herne, his father John the owner of a bakery and grocer’s shop. Emily and presumably her siblings were educated first at home, with a governess, and subsequently at private schools (Emily Dilnot, QAIMNSR Service Record [National Archives WO399_2233]).

The next confirmed historical sighting of the family came in 1901. Frances was running one of the many lodging houses on Marine Parade at Herne Bay (1901 census of England and Wales). Both Emily and Arthur were with her; Frances Harriet, by then 18, was doubtless working or learning a trade.

In early 1908, twenty-one year old Emily took up nursing at St Giles’ Infirmary in Camberwell, London (Emily Dilnot, QAIMNSR Service Record). The infirmary of the Camberwell Workhouse, it had undergone major upgrades in the previous decade, with new wards, operating theatres and a nurses home. She was perhaps inspired by the deaths of her father and siblings to care for the sick. She completed three years training (1908­–11), and then worked there as a nurse and ward sister for almost two years.

In 1912, Emily returned to Australia to join her mother and brother (Arthur, motorman) who had already returned in 1910. (Their 3^rd class passage suggests straightened financial circumstances [UK, Passenger Lists Leaving UK]. The family converged on Melbourne, where Emily joined the staff of Mena Hospital in Simpson St, East Melbourne. It was then she attended the nearby church of St Peter’s Eastern Hill. The clergy at high church St Peter’s encouraged women under their spiritual care to follow particular vocations such as nursing, missionary work and the religious life. They encouraged the nurses to join the parish branch of the Guild of St Barnabas, an international devotional and social group for nurses. St Peter’s records show that Emily Dilnot was a Guild member and active parishioner. 

War service

Emily worked at Mena House, one of several hospitals in East Melbourne, for three and a half years. Several other Mena nurses enlisted, including Estelle Lee-Archer and Eileen Watson.

Emily did not join the Australian Army Nursing Service which may temporarily have filled its Victorian quota. Instead she returned to England and enlisted in the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. She travelled at her own expense (later reimbursed as a War Gratuity) and within a few weeks of arrival was night superintendent at her old hospital, St Giles.

Late in 1916 she was accepted in the QAIMNSR, at her request on a six month contract (Emily Dilnot, QAIMNSR Service Record). Such a request after travelling so far may have related to concerns about her mother, about to be alone in Australia as Arthur had just enlisted in the AIF (October 1916). However, Emily remained in the QAIMNSR for the duration of the war and beyond, till May 1919.  She gave as her next of kin her sister Harriet, now Sister Frances Harriet of the Society of the Sisters of Bethany, an Anglican religious community in Lloyd Square, London. 

Emily Dilnot’s entire service in the QAIMNSR was spent in England as staff nurse at one hospital, the Central Military Hospital Fort Pitt in Chatham, Kent. It was just 60 kms away from where she was brought up and where cousins still resided. She served there from 13 January 1917 until 29 May 1919. Fort Pitt had long army traditions and was the site of Florence Nightingale’s first army medical hospital. It was also adjacent to the Chatham naval dockyards, so the whole area was a military establishment.

Dilnot’s experience is proof home service could be as perilous as active service for the nurses. Chatham’s army and navy facilities being little more than 100 kms from the French coast had made the location a military target since Napoleonic times. In the Great War Chatham became the target for attacks from the air, from zeppelins and then aeroplanes.

In mid 1917, Dilnot wrote from Chatham to her church, St Peter’s Eastern Hill, about the 1300 bed hospital and the sick and wounded patients who came direct from the front. She mentioned frequent air raids as the enemy sought out the naval dockyards and camps around Chatham (Ecclesia [Parish Magazine of St Peter’s Eastern Hill], 1.8.1917).

The worst was yet to come. On 3 September 1917, Chatham was the target of the first night raid on England by German planes. It is almost certain Emily Dilnot was there, not on leave: an outbreak of cerebro-spinal meningitis in the naval base had placed great pressure on the hospitals and staff. Forty-six bombs rained down on Chatham and the vicinity that night; 152 were killed and many injured. A direct hit on the drill hall caused most damage and deaths: naval recruits sleeping there were killed or suffered horrific injuries from splintering glass. Treating the dying and seriously injured, many with amputated body parts, was an horrific task in which all available medical personnel would have been involved.

Further bombings occurred but none as destructive as that. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_strategic_bombing_during_World_War_I; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill_Hall_Library).

Emily’s brother Arthur had arrived in England with his field artillery battery brigade in February 1917. He was soon in hospital near Cambridge in Cherry Hinton being treated for venereal disease. He spent almost three months there, 130kms north of Emily’s hospital. He was sent to France as a gunner in early 1918 and survived the war. He and Emily and perhaps Sister Frances Harriet may have met up during his leave from France in November 1918.

Emily was decorated with the Royal Red Cross (2^nd Class) for her services during the war, possibly connected with the extraordinary medical efforts required after the September bombing. The hospital matron wrote she

Has frequently done Sister’s duties in charge of large medical and surgical wards. She is a most capable and efficient Nurse, trustworthy and conscientious in the highest degree. I could thoroughly recommend her for a post of responsibility either in Military or Civil Service. (Emily Dilnot, QAIMNSR Service Record)

Emily Dilnot was demobilized on 29 May 1919. She returned to Australia in August 1919, arriving several months after her brother Arthur.

After the War

Emily looked for private nursing after the war. In October 1920, she sought financial assistance from the Edith Cavell Trust Fund which provided small grants to ‘sick and indigent war nurses’, stating she was ‘unable to start Private Nursing without help.’ The Trust sent her £15 (Edith Cavell Trust Fund, Name Index, M291, NAA, Melbourne).

Her difficulties were shortlived however. In 1921 Emily Dilnot was appointed matron of St Alban’s Private Hospital, a sizeable general hospital in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh. She remained there for twenty years, sharing her accommodation with her mother Frances until Frances’ death in 1937.

During that time Emily applied for assistance from the Edith Cavell Trust Fund on two further occasions when illness prevented her working, in 1923 and 1925.

She also travelled, returning to England in 1934, 1937 and then for a final time about 1943. In 1934, she travelled first class from Southampton to Capetown, likely as a nurse/companion and possibly to see her sister Frances Harriet SSB at the order’s orphanage in Plumstead, Cape Province. Her trip in 1937 was in the more modest tourist class.

Around 1943, Emily Dilnot returned to England once again, this time permanently. With both her mother and brother dead (1937 and 1941 respectively), her only remaining sister, Frances Harriet SSB, was in England.

Emily was in her mid 50s and to her mind willing and able to serve in another war, so she made application again to the QAIMNSR. It was politely declined:

Your loyal offer ... is very much appreciated ... It is regretted that in view of your age and medical category you cannot be accepted.

A sentence referring to preference for ‘younger nurses suitable for active service’ was judiciously deleted from the final version (Emily Dilnot, QAIMNSR Service Record).

Emily Dilnot died in Wandsworth, London in 1984, aged 97. Her sister Frances Harriet predeceased her, in 1972.