Beatrice Emma Keppel (1890–1932)

Beatrice Emma Keppel is named on the honour board at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, East Melbourne commemorating parishioners who served as nurses in the Great War of 1914–1918.

Keppel was born into a pioneering North Queensland family with properties around Charters Towers. She trained as a nurse at the District Hospital there, then came to work at the Women’s Hospital in Carlton around 1914. She applied to enlist in 1916, around the same time as her brother William, and embarked on active service in May 1917.

Keppel served initially with the Croydon War Hospital in Surrey, and then No 3 Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Dartford which specialised in the treatment of ‘shell shock’ patients. Her brother was wounded on the Western Front while she was stationed in Dartford, and she was apparently released to nurse him until his death.

In July 1918 she was transferred to the 38 [British] Stationary Hospital which had just relocated to Genoa, Italy. The hospital had Australian nursing staff and British medical officers. Keppel served there until she returned to England in January 1919. After several months working at Nos 2 and 3 Australian Auxiliary Hospitals and promotion to sister, she sailed for Australia.

After the war, Keppel ran a private hospital in East Malvern, Melbourne in the early 1920s. She returned to Queensland in 1925 when she was appointed matron of the Stanthorpe General Hospital.

Keppel died in harness, killed in an accident near Stanthorpe in 1932 when the car she was driving overturned. She is buried in Stanthorpe General Cemetery.

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Before the War

Beatrice Amma Keppel was born into a pioneering North Queensland family with properties around Charters Towers.

Her father, Francis Henry Keppel (c1857–1919) arrived when ‘quite a lad’ in Charters Towers about 1874 (Townsville Daily Bulletin, 12.9.1919, p4). Beyond that his origins are unclear. He worked initially at Cape River in central Queensland, and then at Maryvale, on the property of the explorer and pastoralist William Hann (G. C. Bolton, 'Hann, William (1837–1889)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hann-william-3708/text5817, published first in hardcopy 1972, accessed online 2 October 2016). He married Louisa Clark Hann, a daughter of William, and settled on the station ‘Niall’ at Maryvale, becoming a successful and entrepreneurial grazier of cattle and sheep and investor in and owner of stock, stations, hotels, and butchery businesses.

Francis and Louisa had eight children between 1882 and 1894 (3s, 5d). Beatrice, born in 1890, was their fifth. Louisa, her mother, died aged 34 when Beatrice was five, doubtless as the consequences of childbirth. Francis remarried in 1904.

Beatrice (‘Bee’) was brought up in the North Queensland bush which shaped her life. Her upbringing made her ‘capable, with the practical ability and humanising experiences of the North Queensland bush life at the back of her. She could do most things, from drafting cattle to [later] assisting at a most delicate operation’ (Townsville Daily, 23.11.1983, p7).

Beatrice Keppel took on a nursing career. She began training about 1910 at the District Hospital at Charters Towers, then moved to Melbourne to the Women’s Hospital in Carlton. It was probably during those years (c1913–16) that she attended St Peter’s Church Eastern Hill, and likely with nursing colleagues who were members of the church’s Guild of St Barnabas, the devotional and organization set up for nurses.

She returned to Queensland where she enlisted.

War Service

Beatrice Keppel applied to enlist in the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1916 (Beatrice Emma Keppel, Service Record [NAA]). She was experienced and would have seen colleagues at the Women’s Hospital and St Peter’s Eastern Hill joining up, but the most compelling motive may well have been the enlistment of her younger brother William. Both applied in 1916 in the state of Queensland. They were reasonably close in age and described as a ‘splendid couple, both being of magnificent physique, Miss Keppel standing at 6’1”, and her brother 6’4”’ (Brisbane Courier, 29.11.1932, p15).

After a period of mandated home service nursing troops repatriated back to Australia, Staff Nurse Beatrice Keppel embarked for overseas from Sydney on 9 May 1917 and disembarked in Plymouth on 29 July. Private William Keppel arrived in Glasgow in October, was hospitalised with mumps, then left England for France in mid January 1918 (William Hann Keppel, Service Record [NAA]).

The Keppel siblings presumably met up in this time. Beatrice was initially posted to the Croydon War Hospital in Surrey near London, and then shortly before Christmas 1917 to No 3 Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Dartford, also near London. 3AAH was a large hospital with 1400 patients, many of them with ‘nerves’ and shell shock.

While she was at 3AAH, Beatrice Keppel received news that her brother William had received serious gun shot injuries in fighting near Marne. He was sent in a dangerous condition to 8 Stationary Hospital in Wimereux, France, where he died three weeks later on 21 April 1918 (William Hann Keppel, Service Record [NAA]). Although there is no indication in Beatrice’s service record of compassionate leave, William was ‘nursed by his sister up to the time of his death’ (Brisbane Courier, 29.11.1932, p15). It is not surprising that she was hospitalised a few weeks later in St Albans, London (for sick Australian sisters) with influenza (Beatrice Emma Keppel, Service Record).

On her recovery, in July 1918 Keppel was transferred to 38 General Hospital, then located in a boys’ school in the port city of Genoa in Italy. It was a British hospital with British ‘tommies’, wounded and/or sick. The medical officers were also British, while the nursing establishment (27 nurses and the highly regarded and decorated Matron Ethel Davidson) were Australian. Relations were harmonious, due to the matron’s deft administration. ‘Sometimes we were busy’, recalled Davidson, ‘sometimes not’ (Jan Bassett, Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War, 1992, p70). Perhaps the busiest period came after the Armistice was signed (11 November 1918), with the influenza outbreak and the arrival of 250 Austrian prisoners, emaciated and with shocking wounds (Bassett, p70).

Presumably Keppel enjoyed sightseeing around Genoa when time permitted. She also spent ten days on leave, including several in Rome, just before Christmas in 1918 (Keppel, Service Record).

Keppel returned to England, landing in Southhampton on 22 January 1919. She was posted again to 3AAH Dartford, and then to 2AAH in Southall which specialised in amputee patients, and prepared them for repatriation to Australia. There she was promoted from staff nurse to sister in June 1919.

She left England for Australia on the SS Main on 23 July 1919.

After the War

Sister Beatrice Keppel reached Melbourne in October 1919, after a long voyage punctuated by engine failures and delays in port (Age, 13.10.1919, p7). The passengers were returning troops, some with wives and children. There were three births between Fremantle and Melbourne.

Keppel resumed nursing at the Women’s Hospital in Carlton (Australian Electoral Roll, 1921), then in 1922 opened her own hospital, Dalmalington, in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern. She provided medical surgical and midwifery services, as well as caring for elderly people (e.g. Prahran Telegraph, 25.1.1924, p8).

Perhaps desirous of returning to Queensland and a larger professional canvas, Keppel took up the appointment as matron of the General Hospital in Stanthorpe, south east Queensland in 1925.

She made a strong impression on the hospital and the community. She was described as ‘a born nurse, a woman of unusual capacity, and sympathy’, and her position as matron as one that ‘her organising capacity, wide experience, and ability admirably fitted her for’ (Townsville Daily Bulletin, 23.11.1932, p7).

Tragically, Keppel died in an accident near Stanthorpe in 21 November 1932. The car she was driving hit an embankment and overturned; she died at the scene (Brisbane Courier, 28.11.1932, p13, 29.11.1932, p15). She was buried after a packed military funeral in St Paul’s Church of England in the Stanthorpe General Cemetery.

Tributes flowed. The correspondent to the Brisbane Courier Mail lauded her as ‘a lady of striking personality, a charming manner, and a sweet disposition ... such a true type of that noble band of “women of the west’’’ (Brisbane Courier, 29.11.1932, p15).

Beatrice Emma Keppel is commemorated at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, East Melbourne among parishioners who served in the Great War of 1914–1918.