Sister Janet Wells

Queen Victoria wanted a special award to be created for the distinguished service by female nursing sisters in South Africa. The Royal Red Cross was introduced to Military Nursing by Queen Victoria on 27 April 1883. It is awarded to army nurses for exceptional services, devotion to duty and professional competence in British military nursing. This award was regarded as the equivalent of the Victoria Cross for nurses.

The Royal Warrant said that the Royal Red Cross medal be given: “upon any ladies, whether subjects or foreign persons, who may be recommended by Our Secretary of State for War for special exertions in providing for the nursing of sick and wounded soldiers and sailors of Our Army and Navy”.

Florence Nightingale was the first recipient of this medal, for her work in the Crimea War at Scutari Hospital where she attended to injured and ill soldiers and officers.

The second recipient was Sister Janet Wells who was only 18 years old when she was posted to Zululand to command a medical post. She earned the nickname “Angel of Mercy”.

Many soldiers had joined the army to escape the squalor and poverty at home. They had diseases but showed no signs of these when they joined the army. They contracted and spread disease wherever they lived in cramped, filthy and unhealthy conditions and these were abundant during the campaign. Soldiers knew very little about protecting their food and water from bacteria-carrying flies. Their personal hygiene was also not very good. Latrines were dug near tents and dead animals left or buried near water supplies.

Disease caused the loss of many more lives of the soldiers than did death from battle.

Reports from the war reflect that bowel diseases (enteric fever, dysentery and diarrhoea), malaria and tuberculosis were the most serious medical problems. The medical treatment for snake bite was copious amounts of alcohol.

Sister Janet Wells, in November 1876, aged 17, joining the Training School of the Evangelical Protestant Deaconesses Institution as a trainee war nurse.

She was sent to the Balkans to assist Russian army medical teams in the winter of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War.  In mid 1879, she returned to England, but immediately put in a request to go to South Africa.

At the request of the Duke of Sutherland, Chairman of the Stafford House South African Aid Committee, and with the approval of the military authorities, Sister Janet and six nurses set off for Zululand, most with less than 24 hours notice.

On arrival at Durban, the nurses were appointed to various military hospitals in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Ladysmith.  Due to her experience, Sister Janet was appointed to take charge of the Base Field Hospital at Utrecht that supported Sir Evelyn Wood’s column.  Her journey in mail carts, covered the 217 miles to Utrecht in five days, over badly rutted roads. She was lodged with the only English family in village.

As a decorated veteran of the 1878 Balkan War, she had extensive experience in treating war wounds. In her first two months at Utrecht she treated over 3,200 patients, both British and Zulus, many from the battles of Hlobane, Khambula and Ulundi.  She performed numerous operations, and brought discipline, into a chaotic and desperate situation.

Blisters caused by marching in heavy steel-shod boots affected just about every soldier. These blisters frequently became infected. Wells and her orderlies regularly deroofed the blisters, and cleansed and dressed their suppurating sores with salt.

Her cure for the fungal disease (‘athlete’s foot’) that affected the feet of soldiers campaigning in hot climates, was to instruct them to urinate in their boots each evening, then let the boots dry out overnight. She knew urine contained an agent (urea) that would kill off the fungus – to the soldiers, it seemed a miracle cure.

Towards the end of the war she was sent to Rorke’s Drift where she ministered to the remaining garrison. No doctor had visited the reduced garrison for many weeks. Within a few days of arriving she had examined all the 35 British soldiers at the outpost. Most were reasonably healthy, though the majority suffered from abrasions and sores, with the main medical problem being stomach problems.

One of her first acts was to insist that the fort’s daily drinking water was collected upstream from the river and then boiled. Cooking utensils and cutlery were sterilised by boiling after each meal. Within days, the men’s health improved. A laundry was also set up to wash the soldiers’ bed linen, under-clothing, and shirts. Eight sick men suffering from ‘fever’ were confined to two tents outside the small fort so as not to spread infection.

She walked the battlefields of Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana, where she collected flowers for her scrapbooks, which already contained many sketches and photographs.  These survive to this day.

She also met and successfully treated King Ceteswayo, while he was a prisoner of the British at Cape Town. On 28 October 1879, she departed from Cape Town to return to London and her family. nursing career.

In recognition of her services, Queen Victoria decorated her with the Royal Red Cross.    In 1884 she and the other nurses were eventually awarded the South African Medal for the care of soldiers and Zulus in the Anglo Zulu War.

She continued with her nursing career and held the post of Superintendent of the hospital at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  In 1882, she married George King, editor of the Sphere journal. She died at Purley in June 1911.