Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Senior Nursing Sister Ethel M. Scammell, Serbian Relief Fund and Scottish Women’s Hospitals, who later conducted pioneering work to improve public healthcare in West Africa

British War and Victory Medals (E. M. Scammell.); Serbia, Kingdom, Cross of Charity, 1912 issue, gilt and enamel; Serbian Red Cross Medal 1914-18, silver and enamel, very fine and better (4) £200-£240

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Norman Gooding Collection.

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Ethel Maud Scammell was born in 1886 and took her nursing studies at the Seaman’s Hospital in Greenwich and at the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women from 1907 to 1912. She initially served during the Great War as a Trained Nurse with the Serbian Relief Fund in Serbia from October 1914 to 3 April 1916, before being sent to the small hospital at Bastia on the French island of Corsica from 15 May 1916 to July 1916. Transferring to the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in the autumn of 1917, she nursed in Salonica and Macedonia from 14 December 1917 to November 1918, before returning home and registering as a SRN in London on 19 May 1922.

An article published in the Nursing Journal offers a little more information regarding her later life:

‘Appointment as Senior Nursing Sister on the Gold Coast: Miss Ethel Maud Scammell has been appointed as a Senior Nursing Sister having previously worked for six years in Nigeria. Miss Scammell informs us that nursing in Nigeria has very much improved of late years and the natives themselves are being trained to qualify for posts in the hospitals. The great difficulty is to get male nurses, and the West African medical staff are now insisting that all nurses trained in Government Hospitals shall have achieved a certain standard of education and shall have passes what is equivalent to the sixth standard class in England. Miss Scammell speaks very hopefully of the probable results of the pioneer work.’

Serbian awards remain unconfirmed.

Sold with a fine Overseas Nursing Association 1896 cape badge, with 1923 top riband bar, marked ‘Sterling’ to reverse; a bronze Overseas Nursing Association 1896 cape badge, unnamed; a Royal British Nurses Association badge with top riband bar Steadfast & True, engraved to reverse ‘Ethel M. Scammell 5965’; a bronze and enamel Dreadnought Hospital pin badge, engraved to reverse ‘Ethel Maud Scammell May 1911.’