lucy ann mallandaine
Lucy was born on 11 January 1867 in Hitchin, Hertford, the daughter of Henry Hawkes Mallandaine and Lucy Ann New. Known as Birdie to her family, Lucy studied to become a nurse and completed her training at Guy’s Hospital in Southwark, South London.
The Guy’s Hospital Gazette of 3 March 1900 noted that ‘Probationer Mallandaine has been promoted to Head Nurse on Mary Ward.’ Lucy was still working as a Nurse at the Guy’s Hospital at the time of the 1901 Census. But in 1905, she left the hospital and travelled to South Africa with her sister Katie to discover the details of her brother Francis Herbert’s death. Five years earlier, he had joined the Bechuanaland Police and died of enteric fever in South Africa in 1899. They found great need in the Natal and both Lucy and Katie stayed in South Africa and worked as a nurse and missionary.
Lucy returned to England in 1907 for additional training at Guy’s Hospital and while home she visited her sisters in Yaxley and signed the church visitor’s book at St Mary’s: 15 Jan 1907, Lucy A Mallandaine, Elalancui, Zululand. However, she had found her calling in the Natal and returned to become the Matron of St. Mary’s Native Mission Hospital at Kwa Magwaza, Zululand. She spent the next 30 years working as a nurse and hospital matron in Natal before retiring in 1932. The Hospital’s Annual Report paid tribute to her contributions:
That the year ends sadly with Miss Mallandaine’s departure is a matter for regret far deeper than the written word can express. To her alone has fallen the duty -a duty that to her was a living pleasure--of building in this distant corner of Zululand a monument to God and a temple of hope for everyone who, sick and suffering, came to find peace and strength and good health once again. In bidding her good-bye and happy voyaging in the future, all who have worked with her at Kwa Magwaza will feel mingled with their sadness at parting a sense of pride at having been attained, as few others have ever done, the confidence of the Zulu; and he gives his confidence only to those he has learned to trust from long and personal experience.
Lucy and her fellow nurse and friend, May Vialls, retired from nursing and returned to England together in May 1933, sailing on board the Ceramic from Durban via Australian Ports to Tilbury in Essex. She listed her sister Catherine's address in Cheshire as her intended address. In 1934, Lucy appears in the Royal College of Nursing Register and her permanent address was listed as Lloyd’s Bank in Pall Mall, London; the register notes that she qualified at Guy’s Hospital between 1898 and 1901 and registered with the College on 16 February 1923. In the 1943 register, she was living at 4 Hillside, Tilford Road in Hindhead, Surrey and she also appears in the Electoral Registers at this address until 1957.
Lucy died aged 90 at the Chesterfield Nursing Home in Oxford on 30 April 1957.