Chateau de Chanteloup

Abstract

During the first months of the war, Edith helped with the Imperial Services League unit and with a VAD Hospital for refugees in Hampstead. On her resignation from the LSMW, she joined the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, appointed to take charge of the X-ray department of the Girton and Newnham Unit under Louise McIlroy. Concerns were expressed by some at the SWH head office over her lack of medical qualifications. Edith took some of Florence’s equipment that had been returned from Cherbourg and some that she bought herself. She was accompanied by Florence’s engineer, George Mallett. The Unit first went to Troyes, France, where they established a 200-bed tented hospital at the Chateau de Chanteloup in June 1915. Edith set up her X-ray room in the stables, using a makeshift shed as a dark room. She successfully introduced X-ray localisation for foreign bodies and pioneered radiology to show gas gangrene. In early October the hospital was instructed to join the French Expeditionary Force in Serbia. Edith bought an engine/dynamo to provide power and a high-frequency therapy unit. The unit sailed from Marseille to Salonika, arriving on 3 November 1915.