Edith Maud Drummond Hay R.R.C. 2nd Class 3.6.19 (1872 – 1960) – artist and WW1 volunteer

Edith Maud Drummond Hay was born on 28th February 1872 in Kinfauns in Perthshire, Scotland. Her parents were Henry Maurice Drummond Hay, a Colonel in the Army who was a Scottish naturalist and ornithologist, and his wife, Charlotte Elizabeth Richardson Hay.  On their marriage, Henry took the family name of Hay, adding it to his own surname.   Edith was one of four sisters and two brothers - Henry Maurice Drummond Hay, James Adam Gordon Richardson Drummond Hay Constance, Alice and Lucy. 

When Peter Drummond Hay and his family moved into his great aunt’s house in the Perthshire village of Glencarse back in the 1980s, he uncovered a treasure trove of wartime memories.

Edith was affectionately known in the family as ‘Aunt Tuck’. She left a fascinating legacy - a collection of illustrated diaries, including an album of her experiences as a volunteer with the British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) during the First World War, when she joined the Perth/38 Detachment.  

According to her Red Cross Record Card, Edith served in several hospitals, including some in France, and she was awarded the Royal Red Cross, Second Class in June 1919 for her war work.   Edith never married and died on 20th February 1960.   The Grant of Probate for Edith mentions the name David Charles Scott-Moncrieff, which makes me wonder if there is a link to the WW1 poet Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff (1889 – 1930).

The family donated Edith’s WW1 album to the Red Cross in London, where it is at the Red Cross Museum.  The British Red Cross’s 2020 Calendar features some of Edith’s WW1 paintings.

The Royal Red Cross (RRC) is a military decoration awarded in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth for exceptional services in military nursing, established on 23 April 1883 by Queen Victoria, and first awarded to the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale. A second and lower class, Associate, was added during in November 1915 during the First World War.

Sources:  British Red Cross 2020 Calendar, Find my Past

https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Card?sname=Hay&id=64335

https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Card?sname=Hay&page=2&id=100475

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/perthshire-family-discover-aunt-tucks-8335249

https://www.geni.com/people/Colonel-HM-Drummond-Hay/6000000015351769856

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Drummond-Hay

Photograph of Edith from https://museumandarchives.redcross.org.uk/objects/8828

Professor Dame Ida Caroline Mann, Mrs Gye, DBE, MB, BS, PhD (Lond), MA (Oxon), MD (Hon) (WA), FRCS, FRACS, FRACO (1893 –1983)

With grateful thanks to Alison T. McCall, genealogist, for finding this information about Ida while helping me with research into her brother WW1 poet Arthur James Mann.

Ida was "a distinguished ophthalmologist ... equally well known for her pioneering research work on embryology and development of the eye, and on the influences of genetic and social factors on the incidence and severity of eye disease throughout the world". She was the first woman to be appointed as a surgeon to the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital - Moorfields. 

Ida Caroline Mann was born on 6 February 1893 in Kilburn, London, UK. Her parents were Frederick William Mann, post office clerk, and his wife Ellen, née Packham.  Ida’s brother was the poet, aviator and teacher Arthur James Mann (1884 – 1933).

Educated at Wycombe House School, Hampstead, London, Ida passed the Civil Service Girl Clerk's examination and took a job at the Post Office Savings Bank. She then applied to study medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women, the only medical school which was open to women at that time. She passed the matriculation examination in 1914, one of only eight women out of hundreds of passes, completed her studies, 'with no trouble and intense delight', and qualified Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB, BS) in 1920.  

Ida gained experience during the First World War at Fulham Military Hospital, and became a demonstrator in physiology.  In 1917 she transferred to St Mary’s Hospital, where she studied embryology with Professor J. E. S. Frazer.  She graduated from the University of London (MB, BS, 1920; D.Sc., 1928) and, qualifying as a member in 1920 (fellow in 1927) of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, she was appointed ophthalmic house surgeon at St Mary’. 

In 1939, Ida visited Australia as the British Medical Association's representative at the 1st Annual General Meeting of the Ophthalmological Society of Australia (B.M.A.). She flew in an Imperial Airways Flying Boat, which took a week to fly at low altitude from Southampton to Melbourne. On 30 December 1944, Ida married widower Professor William Ewart Gye, director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, at the register office, Brentford, Middlesex.

Following Gye’s retirement in 1949 due to ill health and, opposed to the nationalisation of medicine, Mann stepped down from her post at Moorfields.  The couple travelled to Australia and settled in Perth, where Mann set up a small private practice and became a consultant at Royal Perth Hospital.  She also helped her husband with cancer research.  After William's death in 1952, Ida travelled widely in outback Australia at the request of the Western Australian Public Health Department and the Royal Flying Doctor Service, compiling records of the incidence of eye diseases, especially trachoma, among Aborigines.  Ida died on 18 November 1983 in Perth, Western Australia.

Ida's Publications

Ida Mann, The Development of the Human Eye (Cambridge, 1928)

Ida Mann, Developmental Abnormalities of the Eye (Cambridge, 1937)

Ida Mann and Antoinette Pirie, The Science of Seeing (Harmondsworth, 1946)

Ida Mann, Culture, Race, Climate and Eye Disease (Illinois, 1966)

As Caroline Gye, The Cockney and the Crocodile (London, 1962)

As Caroline Gye, China 13 (London, 1964)

Sources: 

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mann-dame-ida-caroline-14894

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Man

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1442-9071.1984.tb01134.x