Studio portrait of Miss Vera Deakin, now Mrs T W White (wife of Colonel the Honourable T W White ...

Studio portrait of Miss Vera Deakin, now Mrs T W White (wife of Colonel the Honourable T W White MP), Honorary Secretary of the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, Australian Red Cross Society, 1915-1919. Miss Deakin was a daughter of Alfred Deakin, former Prime Minister of Australia. In 1915 she sailed to Cairo with Winifred Johnson, and set up, organised and administered the Bureau. In 1916, when Australian troops were sent to the Western Front, Vera and Winifred sailed to London. With the assistance of many Australian and English women, including Lilian Whybrow (later Scantlebury), Vera transferred the Bureau from Cairo to London. Miss Deakin was awarded the OBE for her work. She worked there on a voluntary basis until 1919 when she became engaged to Captain T W White of the Australian Flying Corps (the only Australian to have escaped from a Turkish prisoner of war camp). In 1919 she returned home to Melbourne as her father was ill; he died in October 1919. Thomas White and Vera Deakin were married in March 1920. From 1929 Thomas White was a Federal member of Parliament. His wife Vera did a great deal for the constituents of his electorate (Balaclava, now Goldstein), particularly when her husband was overseas serving with the RAAF in the Second World War.