Introduction: three Gallin sisters AANS

Eleanor Gallin was the second of three Gallin sisters to enlist in the Australian Army Nursing Service in the Great War. Her enrolment in 1915 followed Alice’s by just weeks. Their eldest sister Mary Josephine joined in October 1917, soon after Alice’s brief return to Australia on troop transport duty which presumably inspired her decision.

The three sisters never served simultaneously in the same area or continent, but two worked in the same hospital on several occasions – Alice and Eleanor in Cairo, and Eleanor and Mary with 2 AGH in France in 1918 and early 1919.

Although brought up in country Victoria, the Gallin sisters had a strong connection with East Melbourne, notably through Elmore, the trained nurses home at 1101 Hoddle St operated for some years by another Gallin sister, Annie (Mrs Kelly).

Before the War

Eleanor Gallin (1873–1950) was the fourth of seven daughters born to Patrick Gallin (c1832–87) and his wife Mary (nee Murray or Murry, c1827–1913). The couple also had one son, John. Patrick was an Irishman from Co. Armagh who had probably arrived in the colony of Victoria not long before he married Mary. Her origins are uncertain (Irish?), but various entries by that name on shipping lists suggest she too may have not been long in the colony before her marriage.

Birth registrations put the couple as living the Sunbury/Keilor area north of Melbourne in the 1860s and until the mid 1870s. By 1878, the family was in Marong near Bendigo. This small agricultural and mining community of 134 (1881 census) had an established state school, a Roman Catholic church and a railway station – all facilities important to the Gallins. Both Patrick and Mary Gallin worked for the Victorian Railways, from 1884 at least, Patrick as a line repairer and Mary as a gatekeeper.

Patrick Gallin died in a workplace accident in 1887. Walking back to retrieve his tools, he fell in the darkness and was lying critically injured when his wife found him.  ‘He blamed no one for the accident, and there could be no blame attachable to the Railway Commissioners’ (Bendigo Advertiser, 2.5.1887, p3).

Gallin left his widow and eight children ranging in age from 24 to about 9. Her son John was a railway porter. Two daughters (Catherine b1871) and Margaret (b1862) married, the latter at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne with a notice in the paper. The marriage seems to have been annulled (i.e. deemed not to happen) as by 1903 Margaret had resumed the name ‘Gallin’ and her occupation as a nurse.

Margaret was the first of five of the Gallin sisters to train as a nurse. She completed her two year certificate at the Melbourne Hospital in 1883, her registration with the Victorian Trained Nurses Association in 1902. Mary, Eleanor, Alice and Annie (to be checked) followed both steps.

Margaret seems to have been apart from the family, perhaps because of her marital status. 

The other sisters who were nurses had a strong East Melbourne connection. Annie Kelly (nee Gallin) operated Elmore, the trained nurses home and hospital located at 1101 Hoddle St (corner of George St) from 1904 until her death in 1913. (The 10 room residence with garden had been let in 1890 (Argus, 8.1.1890, p1) and appears to have become a hospital from that time on. The electoral rolls show variously Mrs Kelly, her husband Francis, and sister Mary living at Elmore or just doors away.

Mrs Mary Gallin, their mother, died at the hospital in 1905. In her will (which she signed with a mark ‘by reason of her illiterateness’), she left her small estate (under £100) to her three spinster daughters who, she stated, all resided at 1101 Hoddle St: Elenor [sic] Bridget, Alice Matilda and Agnes Cecilia (a tailoress who died in 1912). (According to the electoral rolls for 1909 and 1914, Eleanor’s address was 31 Collins Place, Melbourne.)

They enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service, first Alice and then Eleanor in 1915, and then in 1917 Mary (who had to adjust her age to meet requirements). 

War Service

Eleanor left Australia on HMAT Orontes on 4 August 1915, just ten weeks after her sister Alice had embarked. She served at No 1 Australian General Hospital at Heliopolis, where Alice was on the staff, and possibly at No 2 Australian Hospital at Mena Hospital and/or Ghezirah Palace just outside Cairo. (Nurses were transferred between nearby hospitals to deal with surges in casualties.)

1AGH was set up in the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, a four story luxury facility in the Cairo suburb of Abbassia. The Gallin sisters were attached to 1AGH throughout its duty in Egypt, a time of near continuous high drama. The deluge of casualties evacuated from the Gallipoli peninsula placed enormous physical and emotional demands on the nursing staff which was expanded with reinforcements as the number of beds expanded (see Rees, The Other ANZACS, pp. 44-45, 48-49). In addition, there was the battle for authority between Principal Matron Bell and 1AGH Commanding Officer Colonel Ramsay Smith that led to the recall of both to Australia in July 1915, a formal inquiry and termination of their appointments (Jan Bassett,Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War, 1992, pp. 34-39). 

Early in 1916, a bout of (infectious) scarlet fever made Eleanor a patient for six weeks at the 4^th Auxiliary Hospital in the military barracks at nearly Abbassia.

By the time Eleanor recovered, both 1 AGH and 2AGH were preparing to leave Egypt for the Western Front in France. Her sister Alice went to France, but Eleanor was sent to India, a very different environment and not officially recognised as a theatre of war. She was among the first group of Australian nurses sent to India to deal with an outbreak of cholera, arriving in Bombay on SS Neuralia on 23 July 1916 (Eleanor Gallin, Service Record; Marianne Barker, Nightingales in the Mud: The Digger Sisters and the Great War 1914–1918, p71ff). Eleanor was posted to the Station Hospital in Trimulgherry near Hyderabad on the Deccan plateau. Her patients in the expanded 500 bed hospital suffered from a ‘malignant form of malaria’ contracted by Indian troops in East Africa and then spread to relieving British troops in the Hyderabad distri on their return (Barker, Nightingales in the Mud, p79).

From May 1916 on, Eleanor allotted 2/6 from her daily pay to her sister Mary, at ‘Elmore, in Hoddle St, East Melbourne.

After five months in Trimulgherry, Eleanor Gallin was sent to the United Kingdom in January 1917. She served in several British and Australian hospitals: No 2 and No 3 Australian Auxiliary Hospitals near London, nursing patients with amputations and severe limb injuries as well as shell shock cases, and No 1 Birmingham War Hospital (previously the Birmingham City Asylum).

In October 1917, Eleanor Gallin was posted to 2 AGH in France which was then located in Wimereux, near Boulogne in France. The hospital (1 290 bed capacity) was experiencing an influx of casualties in October which continued into November. Work was lighter in the following months but the struggle was against the bitter cold which forced the closure of tented wards. The hospital war diary recorded an influx of troops with machine gun bullets as fighting increased around Arras in March 1918, while in the following May came the first indications of what was to become a very serious health issue in the ensuring months - influenza. The threat of air raids prompted extensive sandbagging and trench digging in the summer of 1918. When the raids eventuated, the matron reported that 'the nurses behaved with perfect calmness, and carried out their duties without flurry or excitement' (War Diary, August 1918).

In late August 1918, the Allied push on the Somme generated another rush of casualties. 2 AGH took only stretcher cases. There was heavy pressure on its beds, and a high rate of evacuations was necessary to keep beds clear for another onslaught of admissions. That month, medical officers and nurses treated bullet and shell wounds, gas poisoning, spinal and head injuries, and dealt with another short-lived influenza outbreak. 

Influenza loomed again in October, when the hospital commanding officer reported its management and control were his 'greatest anxiety'. The matron reported patients were helpless, 'utterly prostrated by the disease'. The nursing staff wore gowns and masks and insisted on ward ventilation, and most managed to remain free of the illness. Believing in the importance of leave for the nurses’ health, the matron arranged that entitlements were met whenever possible. Gallin had two periods of leave in 1918, one in England and France.

During her stint at 2 AGH, Eleanor's sister Mary joined the nursing staff there (31 August 1918), and Eleanor was promoted from Staff Nurse to Sister (1 October 1918).

The extent of the influenza problem, combined with the arrival of winter, virtually overshadowed news of the Armistice on 11 November. 'News of Armistice being agreed received,' the CO wrote, 'Very wet and cold. Extra blankets issued' (War Diary, entry for 11.11.1918). Hostilities might have ceased but the work remained very heavy. 

By December 1918, the number of patients was dropping and the influenza epidemic abating. The medical officers undertook refresher courses at other hospitals. For Gallin and her colleagues, nursing work became easier in some ways but more difficult in others. Ambulant patients confined indoors by winter weather made it harder to keep wards clean and tidy, reported the matron, while her nurses needed 'much tact and wisdom' to deal with restless patients impatient to be repatriated home (War Diary, December 1918).  

No new patients were admitted from 11 February, and the hospital emptied as existing patients were evacuated. The nursing staff began transferring to England from mid February. Gallin took leave in England again in January 1919, others went to Paris or the south of France. In February, Gallin went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with eight other sisters and staff nurses.

Eleanor Gallin returned to England and reported to the Matron-in-Chief in mid March 1919. After a period at 3AAH in Dartford, she left for Australia on the Orient Line’s RMS Osterley in May 1919 as part of the nursing staff. The Osterley was one of a fleet of ships that brought over 50,000 Australian troops were repatriated back to Australia that month. Its passengers included military officers and nurses as well as many soldiers’ wives (Argus, 5.7.1919, p20).

She was 46 when she returned. Exhausted she was granted £10 from the Edith Cavell Trust for sick and needy army nurses 'to enable her to take a holiday' (Eleanor Gallin, Application, Edith Cavell Trust Fund, M291 NAA).

Her sister Alice had returned to Australia several months earlier, their oldest sister Mary arrived later in the year.

After the War

The three Gallin sisters who served in the AANS, Alice, Eleanor and Mary, remained close after the war. Alice nursed for several years at No 11 Australian General Hospital in Caulfield (Caulfied Repatriation). The electoral rolls show Eleanor and Mary living together in the 1920s and 1930s, at Rochester Lodge in the city of Melbourne, their occupations ‘nurse’.

In the 1930s, Eleanor turned again to the Edith Cavell Trust for assistance, receiving £15 on two occasions to enable her to take a rest after illness (Eleanor Gallin, Application, Edith Cavell Trust Fund, M291 NAA).

Eleanor died on 19 February 1950, aged 78, at Mena House Hospital in East Melbourne, around the corner from her former home 'Elmore'. She had been in poor health for two years (UNA, Vol XLVIII(3), 1.3.1950, p81). She was privately interred (Argus, 22.2.1950, p11). According to her probate, her occupation was ‘Boarding House Proprietess, Melbourne’.

Her sister Mary had predeceased her in 1940, Alice died in 1966.

Alice, Eleanor and Mary Gallin featured in the East Melbourne Historical Society's 2015 exhibition 'Gone to War a Sister: East Melbourne Nurses in the Great War'. Their panel can be seen at Gallin sisters: exhibition panel 9