Helen Ruth Lawrence

(1883–1964)

Helen Ruth Lawrence is one of the nurses from St Peter’s Church Eastern Hill, East Melbourne named on the honour boards commemorating parishioners who served in the Great War of 1914–18.

Sister Lawrence enlisted in 1915 and served in Egypt and France, and on hospital ships in the Mediterranean during the Gallipoli campaign and between Egypt and Australia. She nursed at times under fire on the Western Front in mid 1917, and then under a different sort of pressure – sheer numbers – in France.

She was invalided back to Australia in 1918 with ear problems and did not return overseas.

After the war she married a returned serviceman, Ethelwyn Cobb, and lived a hard life on soldier settler block at Red Cliffs.

Helen Cobb (nee Lawence) died in 1964 aged 89.

Before the War

Helen Ruth Lawrence was a daughter of Octavius Vernon Lawrence (1836–1915) and his second wife Jessie (nee Barnard) (b1848).

Her father was a well-known Melbourne physician, the son of a prominent early colonist in Tasmania, William Effingham Lawrence (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lawrence-william-effingham-2336). Octavius had spent three terms at Cambridge in 1855, and inherited his father’s interest in land and involvement public life in and around Launceston.

In 1864, he moved to Victoria with his wife Edith Caroline (nee Wettenhall), three children and the family servant (Launceston Examiner, 24.12.1864). As in Launceston, he attended public occasions such as levees and balls, but his main activity was the study of medicine at the University of Melbourne, where he was among the first students in the faculty. He was highly successful, an honours man and exhibition holder, and graduated MB 1868 and MD 1871. He and Edith had a further five children in Melbourne between 1865 and 1871.

From 1869 until 1879, Octavius Lawrence was connected with the Melbourne Hospital, initially as a resident medical officer, and subsequently senior resident, honorary physician and member of the hospital committee. He resigned in 1879, not before time in the eyes of some, as his many and varied interests absorbed more energy and commitment than the Melbourne Hospital (Australasian, 19.4.1879, p4). Those interests included property near Launceston and later in Gippsland, and the Melbourne Anglers’ committee. His name appeared among prominent Melbourne citizens endorsing Professor Roberts’ widely advertised Dancing and Calisthenics Class in 1873. He and his family lived in Fitzroy and attended his local Anglican parish of St Mark and nearby St Peter’s Church Eastern Hill, East Melbourne.

As Octavius’s medical career waxed and waned in the 1870s, two personal tragedies overtook him: the death in 1872 of his wife and mother of their eight children and the accidental drowning of their 16 year old son in 1876 (Argus, 27.12.1872, p4; Argus, 27.4.1876, p4). In 1878, he remarried, again in Launceston, his second wife Jessie (nee Barnard) no doubt a longstanding personal or family connection. He was 42, she 28. To his surviving family of seven children, he and Jessie added a further six children between 1879 and 1889. He retired from medical practice and devoted his time, interests and money to his large properties in west Gippsland, horseracing and competitive billiards (Trafalgar and Yarragon Times, 19.2.1915, p2).

Helen Ruth Lawrence was born in Melbourne in 1883. She attended the school attached to St John’s Church of England in Camberwell, and then followed in the footsteps of her older half sister (Mabel) Bertha by training as a nurse at the Launceston General Hospital. She completed her training there in November 1913, as war clouds gathered in Europe.

Both Helen and her sister Bertha attended St Peter’s Church Eastern Hill, East Melbourne, where many family members had been baptised in childhood. Popular St Peter’s practised a ‘high’ form of Anglicanism in teaching and worship, an element of which was support for women pursuing vocations suitable for their gender.

War Service

Helen Lawrence was one of 50 nurses from Launceston General Hospital who served in World War 1 with the Australian Army Nursing Service (Kirsty Harris, ‘In the “Grey Battalion”: Launceston General Hospital Nurses on Active Service in World War I’, Health and History, Vol 10 (1), 2008, http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/hah/10.1/harris.html).

She was well qualified with the Launceston General Hospital Certificate and first class honours in the Australian Training Nurses Association examination. She had been a ward sister on day duty, night duty and in operating theatres.

Helen Lawrence was the second of three members of her immediate family to enlist. Her brothers Bruce Effingham Lawrence and George Douglas Lawrence had served as officers in volunteer regiments in Victoria for several years before 1914. Bruce embarked as captain with the Australian Light Horse for Egypt in early 1915, and George as a captain with the 8^th Brigade Field Artillery in May 1916. First George and then Bruce lost their commissions for the same reason: in effect, inability to command their men (Bruce Effingham Lawrence, George Douglas Lawrence, Service Records [NAA]).

Helen Lawrence formally joined the AANS on 21 August 1915. Three days later Sister Lawrence left Melbourne on the RMS Morea in the company of medical and infantry reinforcements for the front and private passengers bound for London (Helen Lawrence, Service Record, [NAA]). Edith Miller and Ruby Hornsey, fellow parishioners from St Peter’s Eastern Hill, were also on board.

Lawrence disembarked in Suez and reported to No 2 Australian General Hospital which had been set up in the Ghezireh Palace Hotel on the banks of the Nile after the original Mena House site proved far too small to contain the avalanche of casualties from the Gallipoli campaign.

Like the Heliopolis Palace Hotel where 2AGH’s sister hospital 1 AGH was housed, the Ghezirah Place Hotel was ever intended to be a hospital. Nonetheless along with 1AGH, 2AGH treated thousands of sick and wounded from the Gallipoli campaign. One of Lawrence’s colleagues, Lyla Ferguson from Terang, described 2AGH in a letter home. There were hundreds of patients in 45 wards. As well as wounded Australian soldiers, some of whom were 'almost cut to pieces', there were 'crowds of medical cases', mainly British troops with dysentery, jaundice and typhoid. The patients in Ferguson’s ward (presumably like Lawrence’s) were looked after by 2 orderlies, 2 Arabs, 2 nurses and one or two convalescent patients (Terang Express, 7.1.1916).

There were lighter notes in Ferguson’s letter however suggesting the nurses’ lives off duty. The daily streetscapes with camels and donkeys were just like familiar bible pictures. And there was having to rush for a tram (from sight-seeing?) so as not to be late on duty. 

Nurses were often rotated around the various Australian and British hospitals in Cairo and Alexandria and hospital ships collecting casualties from Gallipoli. The battle casualties were numerous and severe, and many of the Australian troops in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force were afflicted by dysentery and diarrhea. According to Lawrence’s service record she travelled on the hospital ship Dover Castle in October 1915, presumably to recover sick and wounded Gallipoli casualties from Mudros and/or Malta and bring back to hospitals in Egypt.

Lawrence left Egypt for Australia in February 1916 on the ship Nestor, carrying sick, wounded and unsuitable troops back to Australia. Her turn around time in Australia was brief: by early May, Lawrence was back in Egypt, on the staff of No 3 Australian General Hospital in Abbassia on the edge of Cairo.

3AGH had been set up in a former harem near the Abbassia barracks early in 1916 after its remarkable period on Lemnos. The matron, Grace Wilson, described the wards as ‘large, lofty and well-ventilated’ (Jan Bassett, Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War [1992], p58). The work was relatively light, mainly medical cases, many of whom were awaiting repatriation to Australia. ‘The majority were unfit for further service, and a considerable proportion were found to be classed as “men who should never have been enlisted” (3AGH, War Diary, May-September 1916 [AWM]). Furthermore, ‘there was much to do during time off, pyramids to climb, tombs to visit, feluccas in which to sail down the Nile, camels and donkeys to ride, Luxor and Aswan to see’ but also irritating restrictions on the nurses’ freedom (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p58).

The hospital did treat some serious infectious cases, some very acute (3AGH, War Diary, May-September 1916 [AWM]). Lawrence was hospitalised during her period of duty there, spending several weeks off duty as the result of diarrhoea.

In September 1916, 3AGH packed up and moved to the Kitchener War Hospital in Brighton, England. Lawrence and her fellow nurses looked after wounded troops from the Somme. Some were “very difficult” cases and the work was “very hard” according to nurses there (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p.58).  The nurses’ living conditions were also difficult, their quarters in a nearby school where they were “fearfully cold”. The frozen ground over which they walked to the hospital led to some nurses being hospitalised with chilblains (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p.58; emhs.org.au/person/frey/maud_josephine).

In late April 1917, 3AGH moved again, this time close to the western front – Abbeville in France. Abbeville was near the valley of the Somme, site of huge battle losses and casualties. While waiting for 3AGH to be set up, the 90 nurses were dispatched to various hospitals in the area: Lawrence went with Matron Wilson and 28 others to the nearby No 1 South African Hospital (Lawrence, Service Record; 3AGH, War Diary, April 1917 [AWM]).

3AGH supplied medical staff to the No 1 Australian Casualty Clearing Station and to British hospitals according to need. For three months from June to August 1917, Sister Lawrence rotated between 1ACCS and the nearby British 53 Casualty Clearing Station in Bailleul, 115kms north of Abbeville. They were inundated in June 1917 with casualties from the Battle of Messines arriving in their hundreds by ambulance train convoys day and night. Lawrence reported for duty at 1ACCS on 5 June just in time for an avalanche of patients, 560 the night of 6 June and 782 the following day, making 1342 in all (1ACCS, War Diary, June 1917 [AWM]). They were treated and evacuated to other hospitals as quickly as possible. In June 1917, 1ACCS admitted 2862, evacuated 2365 and had 135 deaths. On 3 July, the commanding officer noted at 8.30am, ‘many very dangerous shell fragment wounds. Staff working all through the night ...’

The nursing was done under dangerous conditions: artillery shelling and aerial bombardment of the town of Bailleul and the hospitals had been a regular occurrence for months. On 4 July, 1ACCS’s tent division was hit at 3.40am. Lawrence’s colleague, Sister Rachel Pratt, was wounded in her right shoulder and lung but continued nursing her patients under fire (1ACCS, War Diary, July 1917). She was later awarded the Military Medal for her bravery.

Lawrence returned to 3AGH at Abbeville on 24 August 1917. October was a month of ‘high pressure’ with 2402 admissions and 2871 discharges, and November similar. The weather was becoming colder causing health problems for the medical staff. The shortage of heating stoves and lack of flooring in tents ‘made the conditions hard for invalids and Nursing staff’ (3AGH, War Diary, October, November 1917 [AWM]).

The first two months of 1918 brought some respite in patient arrivals, which allowed medical staff to take leave when it fell due. Lawrence spent a fortnight in Cannes in the south of France in February 1918.

March 1918 brought an abrupt change in numbers and the types of conditions. The cases were ‘more severe, and their condition more desperate, many arriving with only the field dressing applied’. The hospital expanded to 2000 beds, extra nursing staff arrived, the operating theatres were in use day and night. Even for a battle experienced hospital like 3AGH, the stress was ‘exceptional’ (3AGH, War Diary, October, November 1917 [AWM]).

During the month several sisters became ill and were evacuated to England. Lawrence was among them, struck down with otitis media (an ear problem). She was hospitalised first in France and then in England. For some weeks she was transferred backwards and forwards between the Sick Sisters Hospital in Southwell Gardens (Kensington) and No 2 Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Southall until the persistent ear problems forced her return to Australia as an invalid. She left England for Australia on 12 May 1918.

Her activities between her return and her discharge from the AANS are unclear. She may well have recovered sufficiently to nurse, probably in repatriation hospitals in Melbourne and/or Launceston.

After the War

Helen Lawrence was discharged from the AANS at the Anglesea Barracks in Hobart in May 1919.

Like many other Great War nurses Helen moved into the new and burgeoning field of infant health. In 1922 she began midwifery training at the well-respected Queen’s Home in Adelaide but took ill. Hospitalised away from home without support, she was rescued by the South Australian Army Nurses Fund which arranged and paid for her hospital care (Cobb/Lawrence, Helen, Edith Cavell Trust Fund, M290 NAA). The extent of her plight is suggested by the SA Fund secretary who wrote ‘We would have been other than human to have disregarded her needs’. She returned to Victoria for additional treatment, then spent some months in Tasmania as a senior nurse at the Military Hospital in Hobart (File, ECTF). That period of employment in 1924 was her last. From then on, she was dogged with health problems and furthermore she had married.

Helen Lawrence married Ethelwyn Dearsley Cobb (c1873–1958) in 1924. Cobb had served in the AIF from 1915. They may have met through their fathers who were both doctors with Gippsland property and connections, or possibly during the war in Alexandria or France. He was Roman Catholic, she a High Church Anglican.

In 1919, Cobb was a fruit grower in Mooroopna near Shepparton, learning irrigation and fruitgrowing methods in preparation for a soldier settlement block (Ethelwyn Dearsley Cobb, Digitised Solder Settlement Records in Victoria, Public Records Office Victoria). In 1921, he secured a block at Red Cliffs near Mildura for around £675.

Red Cliffs was the largest soldier settlement in Australia, made up of almost 800 farm blocks with grape vines for dried fruits (which yielded a quicker return than grain crops). Cobb would have cleared his block of scrub by hand, labouring in the heat and living in a tent, conditions which defeated some setters. By 1924 when he took his bride there, facilities had grown considerably: there were two schools, numerous hotels and clubs, and the promise of a railway line.

While Red Cliffs was touted as a major success, with good crops and exports, there were numerous instances of difficulties, sometimes extreme, among the soldier settlers. Not least were their health problems. The Cobbs were both war veterans and both experienced significant health issues while living at Red Cliffs. Helen turned again to the Edith Cavell Trust Fund for assistance on three occasions. In her applications in 1928 and 1941, she detailed the debilitating health problems that plagued her (severe rheumatism, thrombosis and breast removal) and her husband (respiratory complaints including pneumonia and emphysema). Both needed assistance: she at home and he on the block. Poor returns from the block in some seasons worsened their situation. The Edith Cavell trustees responded with £20 on each occasion.

Helen’s third and final application to the Fund was made in 1959. She had been recently widowed, was living in a house in constant need of repair on an annual income of around £450, and had no military or civilian pension. Her rheumatism was chronic. She received a grant of £35 from the trustees.

Helen Cobb left the block and moved to Melbourne. In 1963, she was living in Highfield Park (near Surry Hills) with Geraldine Cobb, a nurse and possibly her adopted daughter. (‘Helen Lawrence’ is the mother’s name on the death certificate of Geraldine [1930-1966]; father is John).

She died in Surrey Hills in April 1964. She was cremated at Springvale Crematorium, as was her husband Ethelwyn when he died in 1958.

Helen Cobb (nee Lawrence) is commemorated at St Peter’s Eastern Hill, East Melbourne on the board honouring nurses from the parish who enlisted.