RESOURCEFUL SOLUTIONS

in hessian sacks to busy collection hubs in village halls in places such as Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Okehampton and Tavistock, where dozens of people worked in drying rooms, packing rooms, squeezing-out and washing rooms.

In 1915, Princetown had become Dartmoor’s headquarters for moss collection thanks to good railway connections and funding from the Duchy of Cornwall, when the Prince of Wales equipped the town’s old Imperial Hotel as a depot for moss collection. As reported in the

Prince of Wales visited the centre on 23 February 1918 and met Mrs Read, the prison governor’s wife, who was in charge of the 40 or so volunteers – including Fanny – processing the moss to dressings, with “three hours’ careful work” going into each moss dressing.

The moss was first spread out on the ground to dry, then sorted to remove twigs, dirt or leaves. Next, moss was ‘sublimated’ and purified by washing with a solution (there’s no record of what exactly was used; perhaps lime or boiling water), then squeezed through a small mangle to be dried again and weighed. Specific instructions held at

TOP Fanny Frances Howell (third from left) at work in Princetown’s moss depot INSET First World War dressings, with moss on the left the Devon Heritage Services in Exeter describe filling the bags with 1oz moss for large dressings, ¾oz for medium and ½oz for small ones. Finally, moss was sewn into muslin bags of varying sizes to exacting standards set by the military and despatched to depots for distribution by train via Red Cross and voluntary aid detachments.

Former nurse Ruth Hawker of the Devon History Society recreated the production of moss bandages. “I’ve never seen anything in old nursing text books about this but after seeing a picture of children collecting moss in hessian sacks near Ottery St Mary, I wanted to find out more.”

Ruth collected sphagnum moss on Dartmoor to sew into three small muslin bags. “It struck me as extremely resourceful problem-solving. There was a lot going on behind the scenes to enable nurses to dress a wound.”

Next, she explored how they cleaned and sterilised it. “I poured boiling water over the dressings, then mangled each one at a nearby National Trust property, before leaving the moss to dry once more.” She found that this stage of the process changed the muslin from white to brown. “That made sense to me as a nurse because it shows whether each bag had been sterilised or not.”

According to reports in 1916 newspaper this final stage was done before use at the bigger base hospitals in Britain and France, while small, remote hospitals preferred pre-prepared dressings.

Some suggest that sphagnum moss contains iodine and has antibacterial properties, but moss expert Professor Jeff Duckett at the Natural History