Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Sister A. A. Hutchinson, Doctor Flora Murray’s Lady Doctors’ Hospital, Paris

1914 Star (A. A. Hutchinson, Lady Doctors’ Hosp:); British War and Victory Medals (Sister A. A. Hutchinson.); Belgium, Queen Elizabeth Medal, bronze and enamel, good very fine and very rare (4) £800-1000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Julian Johnson Collection.

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Provenance: Tony Sabell Collection, D.N.W., December 2012.

Belgian Queen Elisabeth Medal gazetted in the Belgian Moniteur 14 April 1918, per Royal Decree of 6 August 1917.

Anna Ada Hutchinson served in France and Flanders as a Charge Sister from 10 September 1914. The ‘Lady Doctors’ Hospital’ may be identified as that run by Dr. Flora Murray’s contingent at Claridge’s, Paris, which was staffed entirely by women.

“The only military hospital entirely staffed by women under the War Office, this hospital is the outcome of the foresight of the Women’s Hospital Corps, founded during the first two weeks of the war by two of the leading women doctors in England.” (A War Hospital Run by Women, by Grace Curnock, circa 1916, refers).

The two women doctors referred to above were Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray, both militant suffragists, who were determined that medical women desiring to give their services to the nation should not be excluded from military work. Turning to the needs of the French Army, Dr. Flora Murray took a contingent of the Women’s Hospital Corps to Paris and established her Lady Doctors’ Hospital there at Claridge’s Hotel. Sold with copied m.i.c. and other research.

Belgian Queen Elisabeth Medal was gazetted in the Belgian Moniteur 14 April 1918, per Royal Decree of 6 August 1917.