Beryl Campbell

Tell us a little about your training

In 1908, Beryl Campbell was accepted as a trainee at the Rockhampton Hospital.  Nursing training with its minimal pay and associated “harsh cleaning and housework” was exhausting and the trainees personal time was rigidly controlled.  Probationers had to ‘live-in’ at their training hospitals, a situation that permitted respectable, single women like Beryl to live away from home, so giving them a form of independence unlike other women of their generation.

Beryl completed three years training at the Rockhampton Hospital and was registered as a trained nurse with the Queensland State Registration Board of the Australian Trained Nurses Association (ATNA) in 1911.  She then went on to complete an obstetrics certificate in 1912 at Queen’s House in Adelaide.

What things in training are you glad student no longer have to endure?

Although we have no diaries of Beryl’s time as a trainee nurse, it is likely that she endured minimal pay and the associated “harsh cleaning and housework” was exhausting and the trainees personal time was rigidly controlled.  Probationers had to ‘live-in’ at their training hospitals.  At the same time though, Nursing gave single women the opportunity to leave home and pursue a career, rather than wait at home to be married off!

Tell us where you worked after you finished training.

At the end of her training Beryl had gained nursing certificates in General Nursing, Paediatrics and Obstetrics and worked as a Charge Nurse at Rockhampton Hospital.  From October 1912 she was employed as Head Nurse at Rockhampton Children’s Hospital until she resigned in April 1913 to take on the position as Matron at Marmor Hospital.
Beryl enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 12 November 1914 in Brisbane. Her appointment to the No 1 Australian General Hospital (1AGH) was made on 21 November 1914.
On 21 December 1914 she embarked in Brisbane as a Staff Nurse with the second contingent of Australian nurses from Brisbane on the HMAT A55 Kyarra as part of the 1AGH.  She arrived in Heliopolis in 1915 where the 1AGH was based in the converted Heliopolis Palace Hotel in Cairo, Egypt.
After recovering from a serious bout of cerebro-spinal meningitis in 1916-17, Beryl returned to duty. She was promoted to Matron, and on 12 June 1917 she embarked from Port Melbourne on the RMS ‘Mooltan’ as one of three senior matrons leading a contingent of 215 Australian nurses bound for Salonica.  Matron Beryl Campbell and her 90 Australian nurses took over the 50th British General Hospital (50 BGH), a 1200-bed hospital at Kalamaria.

What is the most rewarding thing about you role?

One of your most fondest memories.

Tell us about any funny stories.

What is the most dreaded activity you have to undertake?

We have not got a record of individual activites that Beryl undertook as an AANS nurse in WWI, but a 1915 letter to home from her time in Egypt says:
“I started to write on this a week ago, & got no further. We have been busy getting wards fitted up, as engagements are expected with the Turks on the Canal hourly. We have not many patients, about 130, but this place is to tap the Maadi & Zeitoun Camps so I suppose we will fill up. Measels & Pneumonia are the trouble. All the deaths are from Pneumonia; this dust from the desert seemingly settling on their lungs.”

Any other information you would like to add?

Medaille des Epidemies

The President of the French Republic also awarded Beryl the Medaille des Epidemies en Argent on 21 July 1919.  There was no accompanying documentation with this award but it was noted in the London Gazette No. 119 dated 17 October 1919.