Next of Kin plaque: Staff Nurse Louisa Annie Bicknell, Australian Army Nursing Service

Places
Accession Number AWM2019.1261.2
Collection type Heraldry
Object type Heraldry
Physical description Bronze
Maker Royal Arsenal Woolwich
Unknown
Place made United Kingdom
Date made c 1922
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Description

Bronze next of kin plaque, showing on the obverse, Britannia holding a laurel wreath, the British lion, dolphins, a spray of oak leaves and the words 'HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR' around the edge. Beneath the main figures, the British lion defeats the German eagle. The initials 'ECP', for the designer Edward Carter Preston appear above the lion's right forepaw. A raised rectangle above the lion's head bears the name 'LOUISA ANNIE BICKNELL'. The plaque is housed in its original fourfold heavy card envelope.

History / Summary

Louisa Bicknell was the first Australian nurse to die while on active service during the First World War. Known as 'Louie', she was born at Elmore, Victoria in 1879. She trained at the Mooroopna Hospital and worked at the Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, before moving to a private hospital at Bairnsdale.

Bicknell joined the Australian Army Nursing Service as a Staff Nurse in March 1915, at the age of 35. She sailed from Sydney on 13 April with the Special Reinforcements for the 1st Australian General Hospital (1 AGH), travelling on A55 HMAT Kyarra to Egypt.

After less than six weeks nursing at 1 AGH at Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, without having known any other serious illness in her life, she died of septicaemia on 25 June. While treating a soldier who had been evacuated from Gallipoli infected material entered a scratch on her right hand and travelled up her arm. She died six days later. Her matron at the time, Jane Bell, wrote 'we are in deep grief, she was one of the brightest, healthiest and unselfish nurses I have known. She was as brave as any fighting soldier, and said when she was dying, "how hard it is to die with so little accomplished, but I would go through it all again to help, and it is all in the game."'. Louisa Bicknell was buried with full military honours in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery.

This memorial plaque was sent to her mother, Mrs Eliza Bicknell, in February 1923.