22/108 Staff Nurse Isabell Clark, (28/4/1885-23/10/1915). "in splendid health"

 

WOMAN'S WORLD

by Imogen.

Nurse Clark, till recently on the nursing staff of the Wellington Hospital, is instructing the orderlies who will be attached to the New Zealand Base Hospital in the duties attendant on their work at the front.  -Dominion, 5/5/1915.

The transport SS Marquette was torpedoed in the Aegean Sea by the German submarine U-35.  Although viewed in New Zealand as a war crime at the time, the ship was a legitimate target, carrying soldiers and not flagged as a hospital ship.  The person actually responsible for the deaths of New Zealand medical staff, the British officer who put them on the Marquette instead of the hospital ship sailing the same route at the same time, was never named.

The Marquette sank fast, and in the confusion many people were drowned through mistakes made in lowering lifeboats - one was dropped onto another which was full and in the water.

The loss of those in the Marquette would have come hard on the heels of the many friends and family members lost at Gallipoli.

Nurse Isabel Clark (missing, probably drowned) left New Zealand with the Maheno contingent of doctors and nurses, and on arrival at Port Said immediately entered one of the hospitals there. She received her training at the Oamaru Hospital, which institution she left three years ago in order to enter a private hospital at Dunedin. Subsequently Nurse Clark joined the staff of an Auckland private hospital, from which she resigned in order to volunteer for service abroad.  -Otago Daily Times, 4/11/1915.

Nurse Isabel Clark (drowned in the Marquette disaster) was the youngest daughter of the late Mr and Mrs Hugh Clark, Ardgowan. She was born in Oamaru, and spent most of her life in and around there. She was four years a pupil of the Waitaki Girls’ High School, and almost immediately on leaving entered the Waimate Hospital as probationer. After two years in Waimate her health gave way, and necessitated her resting for a year, after which she joined the staff of the Oamaru Hospital, where she remained three years, and left on passing her final examination. In this examination she headed the list for Otago. Nurse Clark later joined the staff of the Stafford Hospital Dunedin, where she remained another year, and gained much valuable experience in surgical nursing. From Dunedin she went to Auckland, and took up private nursing. From Auckland she volunteered for active service, and not being accepted with the first contingent of nurses, she had made arrangements to proceed to England at her own expense and offer her services to the Imperial Government when she received the call to join the Maheno and had been at Port Said Stationary Hospital until the disaster. Late letters received by friends from Nurse Clark state that she was in splendid health and looking forward with enthusiasm to the move nearer the front, for which they were waiting at the time of writing. Nurse Clark mentioned that the cause of the delay in embarking for the new field (they were waiting with trunks packed for several days) was rumoured to be submarines lurking about. Nurse Clark’s sisters and brothers, Misses M. and C. Clark, and Mr A. D. and J. Clark, reside at Ardgowan, while a married sister, Mrs R. Buchanan (formerly Nurse Elsie Clark), resides at Tahatika.  -Otago Witness, 22/11/1915.

The Chairman (Mr W. H. Rose), speaking at the meeting of the Hospital Trustees on Tuesday night, said that so many nurses had been trained in the Oamaru Hospital that it would show a kindly spirit if the Trustees kept in touch with them from time to time. The last he had heard of Nurse Samson was that she was in a hospital in Cairo. Nurse Miller was in Serbia. Of the two nurses who were in the Marquette tragedy, Nurse Walker was well again and had been heard from at Lemnos, while Nurse Clark had shared the tragic fate of the ten nurses out of thirty-six aboard who were drowned. On the motion of the Chairman, seconded by Mr T. H. Milligan, it was decided to send a letter of deep sympathy to the relatives of Nurse Clark.  -North Otago Times, 20/1/1916.

A meeting of the Waitaki High School Old Girls' Association was held in Bartrum's tea rooms last evening. There was a good attendance, The chief business before the meeting was the discussion of the most suitable and tangible manner in which to commemorate the heroism and self sacrifice of Nurse Clarke, an old Waitaki girl, who lost her life in the sinking of the illfated Marquette. It was proposed that a memorial should be established and several suggestions were advanced by the members. It was finally decided that a portrait of Nurse Clark together with an inscribed bronze tablet be hung in the school and that the presentation of an annual prize be instituted. .  -North Otago Times, 15/2/1916.

Oamaru Cemetery.