WHITE, Jessie McHardie

Notes by Janet Scarfe additional to material below.

The essay by Perdita McCarthy on Jessie McHardie White published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography is highly recommended (Perditta M. McCarthy, 'White, Jessie McHardy (1870–1957)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/white-jessie-mchardy-9076/text16001, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 21 November 2016.)

White had strong connections with East Melbourne, having nursed at Mena House Hospital in Simpson St before opening her own hospital Crathie (named after her mother's birthplace in Scotland). 

The panels on her life and work shown in the East Melbourne Historical Society's exhibitions 'For King and Country' (2014) and 'Gone to War as Sister' (2015) can be seen at on this website at  

white_print_140929.pdf

and

Gone to War as Sister - exhibition panel 2

Janet Scarfe

Adjunct Research Associate, Monash

21 November 2016

***

MBE, RRC, MID, Greek Medal for Military Merit, Serbian Order of the St Sava (photo)

Wife of Thomas James White, accountant.  After his death in 1896 Mrs. White took up nursing.  she completed her general training at the Alfred Hospital (December 1896 to February 1900) and her midwifery training at the Women's Hospital (February 1900 to March 1901).  By 1906 she was running a private hopsital in Melbourne and had joined the Australian Army Nursing Service Reserve. 

In 1913 she bought The Bungalow, 118 Gipps Street, East Melbourne, and converted it to a hospital, Crathie House Private Hospital.  (The name has since been corrupted to Crathre).  In the same year she was a founding director of the Victorian Trained Nurses' Club at 47 Queen Street, Melbourne.

When war broke out in 1914, she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service, rising through the ranks to be appointed Principal Matron of the Australian Army Nusing Service in December 1915.

On 5 June 1917 White rejoined the Service and departed for Salonika where she was given the task of staffing four British general hospitals. While ministering to the sick and wounded soldiers the nurses had to contend with terrible living conditions, the extremities in temperatures, fire, snow, mud, malaria, dysentery, typhus, flies, lice, lack of food supplies, marauders and friction from the British medicos.

1914-16 served in Egypt; 1916 principal matron of AIF in England; 1917-19 Salonika