Marguerite Ousley 1881-1971

Marguerite Ousley (1881–1971) is among the nurses commemorated at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, East Melbourne, on the honour boards naming parishioners who served abroad or at home during the Great War of 1914–18. She trained at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, then returned to her home land England to enlist in the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. She served in hospitals in France where her health proved fragile, and England. She resigned in 1917 to marry a hospital patient, a corporal in the Royal Scottish Regiment, to the horror of her matron. Marguerite spent her life after the war in Aberdeen, Scotland, where her husband, Robert Mennie, was a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Transport. She died there in 1971.

Before the War

Marguerite Ousley was born in Calais, France on 1 December 1881 (according to her headstone) to Abraham Ousley (bc1836) and his second wife, Anna Maria (nee Brett) (bc1847). When they married in 1869 in St James Church Dover, Abraham was an innkeeper living across the English Channel in Calais. Anna Maria, an innkeeper’s daughter, bore him eight children, beginning with William Henry in 1870 and ending it appears with Marguerite, born in 1881. All were born in or near Calais and baptised in Dover although there is no official record for Marguerite.

The family may have been seriously disrupted at that point. Abraham appears to have died in 1881 or 1882. Anna Maria Ousley remarried in 1883; left with eight children under 13, a second marriage may well have been her only acceptable option. Census records suggest Marguerite and her siblings were scattered. In 1891, for example, Emily (sic) was at the Westbourne Training School for Girls in Paddington (suggesting servant training, incorrigibility or both) while Marguerite, the youngest and at school, lived with her maternal grandparents, the Brett family, in Dover.

Abraham, their father, had family in Victoria. His brothers Jacob and John had come to the colony in the 1850s and were blacksmiths in Tarnagulla, a gold mining town in central Victoria. John later lived in Richmond, Melbourne. It is not surprising then that two of Abraham’s daughters, Marguerite’s elder sisters, made their way to Victoria in 1897. Both 18 year old Anna Maria and her younger sister, Emilie [Emelie] were dressmakers (Passenger Lists Leaving UK, 1890-1960; Victoria, Inward Passenger Lists). 

Anna and Emilie established themselves in Melbourne and their sister Marguerite had joined them by 1909. Anna was a governess in the beachside of Brighton and soon reinvented herself as a French teacher. Emilie (most likely) had been overseas as a companion to a Miss Bailey, a Commonwealth civil servant. Her electoral roll entry invariably lists her occupation as home duties, suggesting she was a live-in companion.

Marguerite began training as a nurse at St Vincent’s Hospital in 1909 and completed the course in 1912. Her references were glowing. This is the period in which she would have attended St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, a stone’s throw from St Vincent’s. St Peter’s was well known for its high Anglican worship and teaching, and its clergy were strongly committed to supporting single women in vocations they deemed appropriate, notably nurses, missionaries and religious sisters. Marguerite may well have attended the St Peter’s branch of the St Barnabas Guild, a social, educational and devotional group specifically for nurses. 

War Service

Marguerite joined not the Australian Army Nursing Service (likely a matter of numbers) but the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (Marguerite Ousley, QAIMNSR, Service Record [WO399_5783 National Archives), She arrived in England on 2 February 1916 and a week later was on the payroll as a staff nurse commanding £40 per annum. She listed her sister Emilie in Melbourne as her nearest relative though her file contains details of her brother John living in Dover.

Marguerite Ousley was initially sent to the Lord Derby War Hospital in Warrington, Lancashire, a large facility with over 2000 beds. A month later she embarked for France and her posting at the 11 General Hospital. The hospital had recently relocated to Camiers, 20 kms south of Boulogne, in a region with a massive concentration of troops, camps and hospitals. It was also just 60 kms south of her birthplace if not her childhood. She was among nursing reinforcements despatched to the hospital in response to pleas from its matron for more nurses (see the War Diary of Dame Emma Maude McCarthy, Matron-in-Chief, British Expeditionary Force, 1.2.16, 17.2.16, 1.4.16, www.scarletfinders.co.uk/43.html). The hospital had capacity for 1500 sick and wounded troops, who arrived almost continuously by train in large convoys from the battlefields of the Western Front. Several months later, the Matron in-Chief visited 11 General Hospital (www.scarletfinders.co.uk/51.html):

The arrangements good, the patients looking well cared for. The Nursing arrangements good, and the Hospital not so full as Etaples. Each Hospital seems to have their own tennis courts for the Staff, which they all appreciate.

Staff Nurse Ousley received a glowing report from the hospital’s acting matron in September 1916 (Ousley, Service Record). Her conduct and character, nursing and conscientiousness were excellent. She was ‘extremely kind to her patients, and manages them very well indeed.’ While not recommended for higher responsibilities, she had charged a surgical ward at night.

Ousley’s weakness was her health – she was not very strong. As autumn then winter – the notorious Somme winter of 1916–17 – set in, nurses succumbed to respiratory illnesses. Late in November, the Matron-in-Chief noted the steadily increasing numbers of sick nursing staff. Ousley was among them: she spent two periods in hospital at nearby Le Touquet and then Etaples, in November and then December. Having apparently weathered the shocking conditions of Christmas and New Year, she applied for a transfer to England. The matron at 11 General Hospital must have regretted the loss of such a nurse (Ousley, Service Record):

She is most capable, extremely conscientiousness and trustworthy. She is devoted to her duties and has worked extremely well all the time she has been with this unit, whilst her health permitted.

The Matron in Chief was more terse: ‘she cannot stand the climate’ (www.scarletfinders.co.uk/59.html)

Ousley was transferred to England and posted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley from April 1917. This long established purpose built military hospital was near Southampton; sick and wounded troops arriving by ship where transferred onto hospital trains and from there to the hospital. It was vast with over 2000 beds for officers and other ranks.

Marguerite Ousley impressed her new matron who described her as ‘an excellent little nurse’ (Ousley, Service Record). Loss of such a competent staff nurse may explain in part the matron’s reaction to Ousley’s sudden application to resign in September 1917. She and a patient, Robert Mennie (1881–1949) of the Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment), ten years her junior, had fallen in love during his six weeks in hospital, and they intended to marry during his forthcoming leave. Marriage necessitated immediate resignation.

Her matron was taken aback and shocked, both by the rash act of this ‘quiet and reserved nurse’ and her own failure to dissuade her from making a ‘terrible mistake’. She described Mennie as a ‘corporal ... a very plain Scotsman from Aberdeen’, and implied Ousley’s impetuous action was because she was ‘partly French’ – in itself a fascinating comment on the image and background story Ousley had created.

Marguerite and Robert married with banns that month in the Presbyterian church in Marylebone. Her activities for the remainder of the war are not clear but she may have worked in some capacity with, for example, the Red Cross. She gave birth to their son in January 1919 in Robert’s home city of Aberdeen (Argus, 5.4.1919, p13).

She subsequently received £23.7.11 under the Australian War Gratuity Scheme (Ousley, Service Record).

After the War

Poor health prevented Marguerite Ousley, now Mennie, ever returning to Australia again. Her sister, Ada Ousley, however made several extended visits to Europe in the 1920s and 1930s which included Scotland and her sister (e.g. Australasian, 13.9.1924, p58; Argus, 12.1.1937, p3).

By now Marguerite’s sisters Ada and Emilie had adopted the title ‘Mademoiselle’, exploiting their French connection.  Mademoiselle Emilie and Mademoiselle Ada were mentioned (separately) in Melbourne’s social pages in this period, attending dances and parties. Ada taught French at St Margaret’s School, Malvern and possibly to private pupils (Argus, 21.12.1937, p7). Emilie died in Melbourne in 1966, aged 95. Ada disappears from electoral rolls and social notes after 1937; the date and place of her death are not known at this stage.

Marguerite’s husband Robert was a senior figure in road transport in Scotland (UNA, Victorian Trained Nurses Association, vol XXXVI (10), 1.10.1938, p312). He died in 1949, and she in 1971. They are buried in Aberdeen.