Gladys Corfield Hughes (1888 - 1918) - British Nurse

Gladys was born in Shropshire, UK in 1888. Her parents were Thomas Hughes, a grocer and farmer and his wife Martha Titley Hughes, nee Corfield.   Gladys had the following siblings:  Martha A., b. 1885, Ethel T., b. 1891, George H., b. 1893, Gertrude S., b. 1894, the twins Dorothy N. and Stella M. b. 1897 and James H., b. 1898.  The family lived in Trefonen, Shropshire.

Chris Woods of the commemorative Group Lights out Trefonen (see website below) has researched Gladys’ First World War nursing career and has given me permission to share the information with you.

Gladys was educated at Grove Park County Grammar School, a Boarding School in Wrexham, and trained as a nurse at Mill Road Infirmary in Liverpool, which was a general hospital at that time.  In June 1915, Gladys joined the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and served in hospitals on the Western Front.  She was posted to the Woolwick Military Hospital in Britain, became ill with influenza and died on 6^th November 1918.   Gladys’s body was taken back to Shropshire and she was buried with full military honours in Nantmawr Chapel Graveyard which is near her home.  She is remembered on the War Memorial in Trefonen, along with two of her cousins who also served and died during WW1  – George Hughes, who was a Second Lieutenant with the King’s Shorpshire Regiment, killed on 12^th August 1917 and buried in Anneux British Military Cemetery, and Charles Henry Hughes, a Second Lieutenant with the Welsh Regiment, killed on 30^th August 1918, and buried in the Morval British Cemetery.

Sources:

http://www.trefonen.org/gladys-corfield-hughes.html

and The Commonwealth War Graves Commission List of Female Casualties of the First World War

Photo by kind permission of Chris Woods.