Nellie Constance Morrice
‘[B]eing the first Sisters in the unit & not being wanted, as we were afterwards told by the officers & orderlies, or some of them, we found our work was uphill to say the least of it ... At times our presence was ignored by the officer with the result that we had very little control over the orderlies. The officers seemed to want the orderly to know that they were quite satisfied with the work the orderlies were doing & that Sisters were quite unnecessary. However the patients thought otherwise.’
– Nellie Morrice, ‘Experiences of Head Sister H.C. Morrice’
Born in 1881 near Berrima, New South Wales, Nellie Morrice was the seventh of 11 children. She trained at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, graduating in 1906, before completing a midwifery course and then nursing privately. At the outbreak of the war, she was working at the Prince Alfred, and she enlisted to serve abroad in November 1914.
Nellie arrived in Egypt on the Kyarra in January 1915. She worked at No. 2 Australian General Hospital – for a time in charge of its infectious ward – and from around June out of its Ghezireh Palace Hotel facility in Cairo.
In September, she was one of around 25 sisters who volunteered to join No. 2 Australian Stationary Hospital (2ASH) on Lemnos. That hospital had been established without nurses, and Nellie later recalled that the presence of nurses was not welcomed by all. She served on Lemnos for the duration of the Gallipoli campaign, leaving with 2ASH in January 1916 on the Dunvegan Castle.
Following Lemnos, Nellie joined No. 3 Australian General Hospital in England, and then in Abbeville, France, in 1917. In 1918, she was awarded the Royal Red Cross (2nd class) for ‘valuable services with the Armies in France and Flanders’.
On her return to Australia, she worked in senior nursing positions and was long involved in the NSW Bush Nursing Association, specialising in midwifery and the care of infants. After 24 years with the association, Nellie retired in 1948. She passed away in 1963.
