Tragic story of St Helens nurse who died during Spanish Flu pandemic

Kezia Esther “Cassie” McConville is buried at St Helens Cemetery, having become a victim of the pandemic in 1918.

Cassie is one of the few women recognised for her service in the St Helens Roll of Honour and remembered on the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First World War website.

Her story has been uncovered by great-nephew, John Owens who has been researching his family history.

John is Emeritus Professor of United States Government and Politics at the University of Westminster and the author of numerous books and articles on American and Comparative Politics.

He now lives in Colchester and has been researching his family history for more than 35 years.

John, born in Widnes, used to visit Cassie's sister who lived in the family home in Hardshaw Street in the 1950s and 60s.

In the current COVID-19 crisis, rightly we celebrate the tremendous efforts of our NHS staff, as we have medical staff in previous crises.

Just over 100 years ago, doctors, nurses and other staff treated soldiers in the Great War as well as in one of the greatest medical disasters of the 20th century, the so-called “Spanish Flu” pandemic that claimed over 50 million lives worldwide. Among the 230,000 British casualties were doctors and nurses tending to wounded soldiers in France and the UK. One of those was my mother’s favourite aunt, Sister Kezia Esther “Cassie” McConville (nee Allen), my maternal grandmother’s sister who lived in Hardshaw Street, St. Helens.

After qualifying as a nurse at the National Orthopaedic Hospital in London, Cassie worked in several hospitals around the country before volunteering as a British Red Cross VAD nurse in May 1915. Thanks largely to British Red Cross archivist Rose Brown finding a series of unpublished index cards it has been possible to trace Cassie’s nursing career.

Clearly, she was a remarkably adventurous young woman at a time when women, particularly young women, were increasingly seeking professional careers and beginning to organise and assert their rights as equal citizens. Starting her VAD service at the Tower Voluntary Hospital in Rainhill, by the end of the war in 1918 she had been posted to at least 10 different Red Cross hospitals.

Having lived for a few years in Greece, she had also developed a flair for foreign travel, even in wartime. So, when the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce raised £98,000 for the construction of a wooden mobile hospital to treat the seriously wounded at the Front, she moved to Liverpool in February 1916, and signed on as a sister with the Liverpool Merchants’ Mobile Hospital. Leaving Liverpool Lime Street on the last day of February 1916 with other nurses and doctors, she arrived at Calais in northern France a few days later. By July 1916, the mobile hospital was erected at Etaples, fully equipped and staffed, and receiving hundreds of seriously wounded soldiers from the Somme, where 420,000 British soldiers were wounded or killed.

Cassie served at Etaples throughout the period of the battle until the end of November 1916. She did not leave a diary to tell of her experiences but the hospital’s matron, Margaret Whitson, formerly of the Brownlow Hill Lying In Hospital, left hers to the Liverpool Scottish Museum Archive, Liverpool. Here’s the entry for the first day of the battle:

“1 July 1916: Last night we had a large convoy mostly very badly wounded - no sick at all ... Some of them said they thought the Germans had retaken trenches we took yesterday, but they said it was a perfect inferno, and they seem to have had little idea of what was going on except that we were advancing all the time. In the afternoon they filled up the remaining beds with a company of Sussex men who say their Battalion was wiped out ...”

When she left Etaples in November 1916, Cassie’s report card rated “satisfactory”, which was a generous for matrons whose judgements were often harsh and unforgiving. Cassie’s pay was also increased from £40 pa to £50 pa. “The great success of our hospital”, Matron Whitson wrote later, “was due so much to the personal element in it. We all came from Liverpool, and were so proud of our hospital, and I think each one vied with each other in trying to make it worthy of Liverpool”.

Returning to Liverpool, Cassie married Roy McConville on Christmas Day in 1916. However, by June 1917, she was off again to the British Red Cross Hospital for Officers in Mayfair, London. There until she left the BRC in December 2017, again she treated casualties directly from the Front.

Sadly, one year later, she was dead, a victim of the so-called “Spanish Flu” pandemic. After a brief illness, she died at the Westcliff Nursing Home in Essex with her mother Harriet by her side. Her husband Roy was serving in France. By now, a doctor’s assistant and a qualified midwife, Cassie was just 33.

As is now well known, the 1918-19 pandemic hit hardest those aged between 20 and 40 years of age, especially women. Cruelly, this was exactly the age group most affected by the war. During the last quarter of 1918, when the epidemic was at its most deadly, women’s mortality in this age range was nearly 600 times higher than it had been for the average of the same quarters of the previous four years. Treating soldiers arriving directly from the front line of the battle often infected, (overwhelmingly female) nurses were especially susceptible to catching it from their patients.

Cassie was buried in St. Helens Cemetery, Rainford Road, St. Helens. A year later, she was posthumously awarded the British and Victory medals. She is one of the few women recognised for her service in the St Helens Roll of Honour and remembered on the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First World War website.

John E Owens (Prof)