Page 4 of the photograph
scrapbook which once belonged to Ms Barbara Tyler. Gina O - (an American correspondent)
- kindly contributed photographs of the original scrapbook. The
book subsequently passed to Keith Haikes an American male nurse
who has maintained contact with SoN. Keith also purchased
Barbara Tyler's badges and other memorabilia from Gina O. On
with the photographs...
The left-hand picture I
think was probably taken because of the flower bed, but given
that SoN has a good selection of hospital building photographs
we might yet see a possible match. Perhaps a long shot... I believe that
MHB was a
military hospital - probably Botley's Park War Hospital in
1940.... but the patients and the nurse are a
mystery....
The nurses in the photographs above remain a
mystery. My belief is that this was the military hospital
previously mentioned 'MHB'; that the nurse or ward was perhaps
called 'Bonson' or 'Bowson'. Slim clues perhaps, but then that
is research. One day, someone somewhere, looking at these
pictures from Barbara Tyler's
enigmatic scrapbook will identify someone - or something,
perhaps in a copy of a photograph they themselves possess, or
have seen elsewhere, and we will have a couple more answers....
More from MHB (1940). There may still be
someone out there who can match or recognise the photographs.
The nurse in the left hand photograph was certainly a VAD - and
the young boy - he may still be alive. Who was he - what was he
doing there? And Christmas 1940 - is that a ward-round in
progress? And the nightingale in the photograph below?...
We may well be able to find out and
document considerably more about the hospitals involved and some of the
more senior nurses. Whatever every page more of Barbara Tyler's photograph scrapbook
published is adding another grain of knowledge, another piece of nursing history, available to all
who may have an interest. More pages next time...
