Pearl Goodman

AANS │ Staff Nurse │ First World War │ France & England
EARLY LIFE

Pearl Stella Goodman was born on 31 May 1886 in the town of Millthorpe, near Orange in New South Wales. Her parents were Caroline Bentley (1852–1909), from Greghamstown, a few kilometres east of Millthorpe, and Thomas Goodman (c. 1837–1901), who was born in Hulcote Mills, in Bedfordshire, England.

Pearl had four brothers and four sisters. She went to Millthorpe Public School and as a young adult became an active member of the Methodist Church and the Salvation Army, attending temperance meetings. For a while Pearl was secretary of the Girls’ Zenana Aid Society, a Baptist organisation that raised funds for missionary work in India.

NURSING

After deciding to become a nurse, in January 1906 Pearl was taken on as a probationer at Orange District Hospital. She passed her Australasian Trained Nurses’ Association final examination in December 1909 and became a fully accredited nurse.

In February 1910 Pearl accepted the position of head nurse at Dubbo Hospital. In February 1912 she was engaged as a staff nurse at Cairns District Hospital – 2,000 kilometres to the north. She was so competent that even at this early stage of her career Pearl occasionally acted as matron. Mush to the regret of the Cairns Hospital Committee, she resigned in January 1913 and in April departed Cairns for Brisbane.

It is unclear where Pearl nursed next; she may have gone to South Sydney Hospital for Women, or she may have gone to Kurri District Hospital in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. Regardless, Pearl returned to Cairns District Hospital as senior sister in March 1914.

In May 1915 the matron of Cairns District Hospital, Miss McDonnell, resigned to serve in the war, which had now been raging in Europe for nine months. Pearl was appointed acting matron. However, she too wanted to serve, and later that year joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) and was called up for home duty with the Australian Military Forces in October.

ENLISTMENT

Pearl left Cairns for Brisbane on the evening of 13 October 1915. That afternoon she was given an afternoon tea farewell at Collins’s restaurant by the members of the Women’s Hospital Guild. She was presented with a silver-backed brush and comb set and had already been given £20 by the Cairns hospital committee.

From 20 to 28 October Pearl served at No. 6 Australian General Hospital (AGH) at Kangaroo Point in central Brisbane and from 28 October 1915 to 29 December 1916 at No. 13 AGH at Enoggera Barracks, on the northwestern fringes of the city.

In August 1916, while at Enoggera, Pearl contracted pneumonia and spent three weeks in bed. She never again felt entirely well after this episode.

In December 1916 an opportunity arose for Pearl to serve overseas. She enlisted with the AIF on 7 December at the rank of staff nurse and was allotted to a pool of general reinforcements.

HMAT THEMISTOCLES

On 29 December 1916 Pearl departed Sydney with 38 other AANS staff nurse reinforcements aboard the hospital ship Themistocles, bound for Plymouth, England. After leaving Fremantle the ship sailed to Durban and then to Cape Town. It then joined a convoy and sailed under blackout conditions to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where the nurses were granted shore leave for a few hours. The Themistocles arrived in Plymouth on 3 March 1917. On 12 March, after nine days’ furlough, Pearl was posted to France.

Pearl Goodman in AANS uniform. (Faithe Jones; VWMA)
FRANCE

On 14 March 1917 Pearl arrived at No. 7 General Hospital (GH), a British military hospital based in La Malassise, a former Benedictine monastery in Longuenesse, Saint-Omer, 45 kilometres east of Boulogne. The hospital had been established by the British Red Cross before being taken over by the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC).

After four months at No. 7 GH, on 7 July Pearl was attached to No. 38 Stationary Hospital, a newly established hospital in Calais staffed by AANS nurses and RAMC medical personnel. Huts were still being erected when Pearl arrived, and patients and staff were accommodated in tents. Nonetheless, the nurses’ tent was boarded underfoot and quite comfortable.

On 16 August Pearl moved again, this time to No. 36 Casualty Clearing Station at Heilly, 20 kilometres northeast of Amiens. In September Pearl started coughing and became feverish. On 22 October she was evacuated to No. 14 Stationary Hospital in Boulogne, a relatively new isolation hospital, with tubercles on her lungs.

ENGLAND

Pearl’s condition did not improve, and on 17 November 1917 she was transferred from France to England aboard HMHS Jan Breydel. At 7.00 pm that same day she was admitted to Southwell Gardens Hospital. Otherwise known as the Mrs. T.S. Hall Hospital for Australian Nurses, and located in South Kensington, the hospital operated under the auspices of the Australian Red Cross and provided nursing and medical care for sick Australian nurses. Pearl was exhausted after her journey from France but by the following day felt much better. Even though she was a patient, Pearl was officially attached for duty to the hospital.

Tests conducted on 20 November showed that Pearl had numerous nodes on her right lung, but her left lung was clear. She was still coughing occasionally and did not have much of an appetite. The presence of tuberculosis was suspected.

A Medical Board hearing was held on 11 December to discuss Pearl’s illness. The Board found that she was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis and was permanently medically unfit. It recommended that she be evacuated to Australia on a hospital ship. On 16 December Pearl was detached from duty at Southwell Gardens and marched out for embarkation to Australia aboard HMHS Kanowna. There was at least one other Australian nurse on board the ship, Staff Nurse Nellie Saw of Western Australia, who had been working for the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve in France when she had fallen ill with tuberculosis. She was ostensibly on light duty but was in fact too ill to do much at all.

RETURN TO AUSTRALIA

Pearl disembarked from the Kanowna in Melbourne on 13 February 1918 and two days later arrived in Sydney, where she was admitted to No. 4 AGH, a repatriation hospital in Randwick. She was well enough to visit Millthorpe on 26 February. From 5 March to 10 September Pearl was a patient at the Malahide Sanatorium in Pennant Hills, northwestern Sydney. Her appointment to the AANS was terminated on 15 August.

It would appear that after leaving Malahide Sanatorium on 10 September, Pearl was admitted to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown, Sydney, where she knitted socks for soldiers until she became too weak to continue.

Pearl died at the Royal Prince Alfred on 6 March 1919. She was buried at Rookwood Cemetery with military honours, her cousin the Rev. Robert Goodman officiating at her graveside. Pearl’s name is recorded on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial.

We will not forget her.

SOURCES
  • Ancestry.
  • Australian War Memorial, Janet Ivy (Jean) Barron interviewed by Matron Kellett, AWM41 1072.
  • Cairns Family History (website), ‘Pearl Stella Goodman.’
  • Lost Hospitals of London (website), ‘Mrs. T.S. Hall Hospital for Australian Nurses, 12 Southwell Gardens, South Kensington, SW7 4RL.’
  • National Archives of Australia.
SOURCES: NEWSPAPERS
  • The Cairns Post (Qld., 12 Jul 1912, p. eight), ‘Hospital Committee.’
  • The Cairns Post (Qld., 18 Jan 1913, p. 4), ‘Hospital Meeting.’
  • The Cairns Post (Qld., 14 Apr 1913, p. 6), ‘Town & Country.’
  • The Cairns Post (Qld., 13 Oct 1915, p. eight), ‘Hospital Committee.’
  • The Cairns Post (Qld., 13 Oct 1915, p. eight), ‘To Bid Au Revoir.’
  • The Cairns Post (Qld., 16 Oct 1915, p. eight), ‘Correspondence.’
  • Daily Standard (Brisbane, 16 Oct 1915, p. 5), ‘Nurses Coming South.’
  • Dubbo Dispatch and Wellington Independent (NSW, 16 Mar 1910, p. 2), ‘Hospital Committee.’
  • Leader (Orange, NSW 20 Feb 1906, p. 2), ‘Orange Hospital.’
  • Leader (Orange, NSW, 22 Jan 1907, p. 4), ‘Rise And Progress Of Millthorpe.’
  • Leader (Orange, 28 Dec 1909, p. 4), ‘Hospital Concert.’
  • Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld., 7 Feb 1914, p. 10), ‘Cairns Notes.’
  • The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW, 23 Dec 1909, p. 10), ‘A.T.N.A.’