It’s easy to think of war as a man’s ‘game.’ Not so, of course. In late October 1918, word was received that Nursing Sister Henriette Millett, formerly head nurse of the Nanaimo Hospital, was among those lost when the passenger liner Leinster was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in the Irish Sea.
Within weeks of Armistice, this latest tragedy claimed 550 passengers, British and American, 130 of them women and children.
For four years of war, Nurse Millett had served King and Country in Mesopotamia, at the Dardanelles and in France, only to be killed when sailing home on leave.
••••
Back home in Nanaimo, it also became public knowledge that some women were suffering on the home front, too, when it was reported that an unnamed veteran’s widow had been cited in police court for not having her children attend school regularly. It turned out that her husband, who’d been released from military service for reasons unspecified, had returned to work in the coal mines, only to be killed after 15 days on the job.
(The single local mining tragedy of that year claimed the lives of 16 miners when the hoisting cables failed in the Protection Island shaft on Sept. 10, 1918. None of the victims, whose names, ages and family status were given in the news reports, match this case, however, suggesting that her husband had died in one of numerous previous mishaps.)
That left his widow to raise eight children on $40 per month, of which she paid $10 monthly rent, leaving $30 for everything else.
Although it was winter, her children were said to be scantily clothed as it was all the poor woman could do to provide for them.
Having made himself “fully acquainted with the circumstances” of her case, and having learned that, even worse than it appeared, it was a case of insult being added to injury as she’d shown that her child was out of school because of illness, Magistrate C.H. Beevor Potts declared that it was no great surprise that the child should have been ill. He then expressed his indignation at the “scandalous” treatment she’d received at the hands of the Compensation Board and said that, when he approached the board to discuss her case, he — a magistrate of the court — had received an “insulting reply to the effect that it was hoped he was not expecting any pay for his services!”
He said he’d taken it up with “some responsible people about town” and notified the Great War Veterans Association of the woman’s plight as she hadn’t received any of the entitlements due her as the widow of a serviceman.
We have to hope that Beevor Potts was successful in bringing relief to this unfortunate woman and her family. Nothing more was stated in print and, without names, there’s nothing more to be learned in this case. But don’t think for a moment that there weren’t other cases like hers. It’s a matter of record that pensions and, later, ‘relief’ didn’t come just for the asking, applicants having to literally bare their souls — and to be absolutely, totally destitute — before the ‘State’ came through with any kind of assistance.
