The Mystery of Isabella and the String of Beads: A Woman Doctor in World War I

It was not until author Katrina Kirkwood was presented with a collection of her grandmother’s medical effects, a few photos and a beautifully-woven string of beads that she realised she knew absolutely nothing about the life of Isabella Stenhouse, a pioneering woman doctor of the early 20th Century. This is her journey of discovery.
 
Travelling through the past and the present and both real and imagined scenes of Isabella’s service as a doctor during the Great War, we witness her childhood in Leith, the sights and sounds of turn-of-the century Edinburgh and her training during the turbulent era of feminine rights and labour unrest. We are by her side treating the gassed, maimed and broken soldiers in France, Malta and Egypt. Throughout there are many questions; some that will be answered, many others not. Where exactly did Isabella go, what she did do, and who gave her the beads?
 
The narrative format may take a few pages to get used to, but once in the flow you become completely immersed in its pragmatic aspects as well as its contemplative passages, eerie coincidences and connections. Here is what the author says when a friend asked her if she believes in ghosts:
 
“… it feels uncanny when I reach a place … where I know that I am on Isabella’s territory. It is surprising. It is delightful. I could even call it elating, but it is not haunting. I have no sense of her presence. As I loiter where she trod and poke nosily into matters she chose not to divulge, it feels more that I am haunting her, as if I am the intrusive spirit disturbing the peace of her self-imposed silence, not the other way round.”
 
Isabella’s first posting is to the Anglo-Ethiopian Hospital in France. We are not spared the emergencies, blood and gore of a hospital at the front and are also privy to the mundane events that are more common: the waiting for things to happen, the petty bickering and often irrational behaviours of those in charge. Marie Curie turns up to help with x-ray machines and there is a fascinating aside into the couple who originally founded the Hospital, Dick and Lillian Doughty-Wylie. Dick, who supposedly had an affair with the famous Gertrude Bell, receives a posthumous VC at Gallipoli. When she hears of his death, Lillian is obsessed with the idea that Dick’s ghost keeps her company around the wards.
 
We also share the frustrations the lady doctors experience in trying to get their roles correctly defined by way of uniform, rank or full accreditation as military doctors. They have much to endure as they clash with the rigid and uncompromising stance of the male top brass in those War years when suffrage was put on hold. There is added sadness that while all families must grieve for their losses on the battle fields, Isabella has an added burden of a mysterious home tragedy with more questions never fully answered.
 
In a Centenary market nearing saturation in both fiction and non-fiction about WW1, there is a need for books that take the reader into areas that haven’t been explored as fully as they might be, and this one succeeds brilliantly in bringing this little-known aspect of women’s history to light. As well as a tender tribute to a grandmother, it is history-telling at its best: immediate, visceral, heartfelt and ultimately extremely satisfying. Without doubt a five star read.
 
(With many thanks to the author for sending me a copy for review.)
 
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