Here we have a nurse and that links to the first class stamp of Mary Morris, whose inscription says "Nursing at home and on the Front Line".
Her life was much more than that though. First of all, Morris was her husband`s name, she was born Mary Ellen Mulry in February 1921, in County Galway, Ireland. She left Ireland just before the start of the Second World War, aged eighteen, and came to England, where she worked at Guys Hospital. After she passed her exams, she was sent to Kent, and her first real job was to nurse the men who were coming back from Dunkirk. Kent was also the centre for the Battle of Britain, and she was involved with that too. However her passion seems to have been the care of children, and she trained as a fever nurse, something quite dangerous, as there was a very high risk of transmission from patient to nurse, and little knowledge of how to prevent it. It was in this capacity that she found herself transporting very sick children from their hospital beds down into the hopeful security of the nearest air raid shelter during the Blitz.
That was not all, for she wanted more, and enlisted with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserves, and was sent to Normandy, just twelve days after D-Day, to repair survivors and send the back to war. And she met her future husband there, though I do not know if he was one of her patients.
She also had a son, in 1947, but there the diary ends. All we know after that is that she died in about 1997, in Wales.
I have a partial checklist of these, which is :
- Dentelliere Flamande [lacemaker]
- Perleuse [beadmaker]
- Blanchisseuse [laundress]
- Modiste [milliner]
- Tissage en Tcheco-Slovaquie [weaving in Czechoslovakia]
- Corsetiere [corset maker]
- Tailleuse [female tailor]
- Brodeuse Suisse [Swiss embroiderer]
- Coiffeuse [hairdresser]
- Repasseuse [ironer]
- Infirmierie [nurse - or infirmary worker]
- Fileuse [spinner]
I have to say that most of these are rather uninspiring jobs, with little variation day to day, and even the ones that sound a bit more exciting, like the corset maker and the beadmaker, would not be so easy on the eyes, requiring a lot of close work and probably in not much light. Their eyes would not thank them, when they grew old.