A photograph handed over to the archives of Bourne Civic Society has brought back memories of a wartime romance at the military hospital which was opened in the town during the First World War of 1914-18 to care for wounded soldiers from the front.

The portrait is of a pretty young nurse who worked there, one of the many girls who volunteered for medical service as the casualties began arriving from the trenches in France and she has been identified as Ida Shilcock, daughter of John Shilcock, landlord of the Nag's Head which he kept for 25 years.

Ida was born in the town in 1884 and later enjoyed a busy social life taking part in many activities, even playing cricket in matches organised by Bourne Ladies held at the Abbey Lawn where she proved herself to be a competent batsman and a successful bowler. But when the war broke out she joined many other young ladies who trained as nurses to staff a new temporary hospital set up in Bourne by the War Office in conjunction with the British Red Cross to provide medical care for wounded soldiers returning from the front to convalesce.

Bourne Military Hospital opened in makeshift premises at the Vestry Hall in North Street in December 1914, with additional accommodation at the National School next door, and between then and November 1918, the unit’s forty beds were in continual use while the medical staff and orderlies recruited by the British Red Cross cared for almost 950 servicemen.

Among them was a young officer in the Machine Gun Corps, Lieutenant Charles Morton Wiggin, who had been gassed and wounded. He was there for six months before returning to the front but their friendship continued by letter and they met again after the war had ended.

Ida Shilcock’s dedication to duty during her work at the hospital was acknowledged in the summer of 1919 during a ceremony at the Abbey Lawn when she was among 19 former Red Cross nurses who received a gold bar brooch with the inscription "Bourne V A D Hospital, 1914-18" in recognition of her work. The presentations were made by the hospital commandant, Dr John Gilpin (1864-1943), a local family doctor, who had been awarded the MBE in June 1918 for his services in conducting the unit in such an efficient manner.  

Then in January 1922, medals were issued by the Red Cross to 39 nurses and orderlies who had each devoted 1,000 hours in attending the sick and wounded at the hospital, the presentation being made by the Countess of Ancaster, president of the Bourne branch. Ida Shilcock was again among the recipients, although by then she was Mrs Wiggin, having married her former hospital patient, Charles Wiggin, at King’s Norton, Birmingham, in 1920.

The Vestry Hall, built in 1867 as a Calvinist chapel, still stands in North Street and after varied uses over the years was converted into a private home in 2004 although the original bronze plaque commemorating its role during the First World War can be seen over the front door in the entrance foyer.

John Shilcock, who was mine host at the Nag’s Head from 1895 until 1920, was also the first chairman of Bourne Urban District Council when it was formed in 1899. He and his wife, Alice, had six daughters, all renowned for their beauty and keenly sought in marriage and each of them found suitable partners, Alice Mary (1873) married Dr Arthur Boulton from Horncastle in 1895, Annie Beatrice (1875) married Thomas Mays in 1898, Fanny (1877) married Harry Dellow from Croydon in 1896, Martha Louise (1880) married John Agnew from Sleaford in 1903, and Ethel, known as Effie (1887), married Harold Twell in 1917.

Annie became the mother of Raymond Mays who went on to a distinguished career in international racing and designer of the BRM. Ida, who had been a bridesmaid at her wedding at the Abbey Church in June 1898, had two daughters, Joan and Barbara. Charles Wiggin, died in 1947, aged 68, and she passed away in 1974, aged 89.

Joan married and became Mrs Joan Johnson who died in 2009, aged 88, when the photograph of her mother in her nursing uniform passed to her son, retired civil servant Lindsay Johnson, aged 59, who lives at Bromley, Kent, and has now provided this copy of his grandmother for display at the Heritage Centre as a reminder of the role Bourne played during the First World War l00 years ago and the romance that blossomed from it.

WRITTEN MARCH 2014

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