Gold ‘VC’ for a Nurse
Not until 1920 could a Victoria Cross be awarded to a woman, but in 1869 the officers of the 104th Bengal Fusiliers had their own solution for a ‘VC’ award to a courageous nurse.
Elizabeth Matthews was born in Kent in 1834, the second child in a family of somewhat humble means but a woman who would go on to earn a significant place in British military history.
Marrying Captain Webber Desborough Harris of the 2nd Bengal Fusiliers (later to be re-named the 104th Bengal Fusiliers) in 1859, the couple later sailed for India and a military life in what was an often volatile and inhospitable part of the British Empire. It was also a region that was not only fraught with myriad rebellions and insurrections, but it could also be an unhealthy and diseaseridden continent.
It was later reported that her time in India was one of personal ‘steadfast dedication to service’, and it was this dedication that would eventually lead to an extraordinary and truly unique award for her devotion to duty.
In 1869, a cholera outbreak near Peshawar (now part of Pakistan) became an epidemic which tore through the ranks of the 104th Bengal Fusiliers. Amidst the awfulness of the rampant disease, it was Elizabeth who became the heroine of the day.
Organising (or at least suggesting) the division of her husband’s regiment into two groups to control infection, Elizabeth nursed those who were sick ‘with relentless determination’. Unfortunately, however, the half of the regiment with which she remained saw a full one third of those in its ranks falling victim to the disease. Nevertheless, she battled on with redoubtable courage and determination, raising morale of both officers and men, and even (on occasions) confronting local tribesmen who dared interfere with her work.
On 17 September, and to try to contain the disease, the remainder of the regiment marched into the countryside and Elizabeth went with them (despite having recently recovered from a fever) and spent the next three months living among the soldiers as they moved through the Indian countryside.
A pattern soon emerged whereby they set up camp each night, buried their dead in the morning, and then the survivors moved on. Throughout this ordeal, Mrs Harris spent day after day tending the sick men and keeping up their spirits as scores fell ill from the disease, which is contracted from infected water supplies and causes severe vomiting and diarrhoea.
On one night alone, 27 men died from cholera, but Mrs Harris later wrote how she had, on that occasion, helped to save the life of one man:
“I saw a soldier fall to the ground. I called my servants; we picked him up and sent for the doctor. While waiting I got some mustard, tore my handkerchief in half and put on two mustard plasters, and the doctor arriving, he was sent off to hospital, and am thankful to say he eventually recovered.”
The North-West Frontier in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8 was certainly a dangerous place and, at one point, Elizabeth was attacked at night by two tribesmen who seized her horse in what she later described with some understatement as “an alarming incident”.
When the regiment returned to Peshawar after the end of the epidemic, Mrs Harris was widely praised for her selfless devotion to the men, and for her endurance and tenacity. The regiment’s officers felt that she had lived up to the traditions of the Victoria Cross which had only been instituted by Queen Victoria just 12 years earlier. Her husband (now a colonel and CO of the regiment) said of her bravery:
“My wife has been my helpmate during the whole course of my command and none of those who were with the Regiment during the awful cholera season in 1869 will ever forget Mrs Harris’s devotion to the sick.”
The regiment’s officers acknowledged her indomitable courage by presenting her with a gold replica of the Victoria Cross and Queen Victoria herself had granted permission for this unprecedented act. The medal itself is an almost exact copy of the Victoria Cross, but the draped scroll on which is inscribed ‘For Valour’ on the Victoria Cross is left blank. Instead, and inscribed on a plaque with the medal, were the words:
‘Presented to Mrs Webber Harris by the officers of the 104th Bengal Fusiliers, for her indomitable pluck during the cholera epidemic of 1869.’
The award was bestowed by General Sir Sam Browne, the then commander of the Peshawar garrison, when the regiment returned after its sojourn wandering the countryside during the epidemic.
Elizabeth Webber Harris died in 1917, but had said of her medal:
“It is a most beautiful ornament and will always be my most cherished possession.”
This unique award is now in the collection of Lord Ashcroft, and although a Royal Decree permitted the award of a Victoria Cross to women from 1920, none have yet been awarded.