Charlotte Bradshaw (1893-1920) was my great grandfather’s sister or put another way, my grandmother’s aunt. She was a nurse in Bradford during the first World War and had an autograph book, most of the entries were collected at the end of 1916 and the start of 1917. After the war she traveled to Australia on account of having weak lungs, she got homesick there and return to England where she died of TB. There are a few entries here from that return journey. My father, Jim, recently had Charlotte’s autograph book scanned and we have worked together to make this website to commemorate her and the soldiers she treated. 

@conorjh

Nurse Bradshaw. [The is another picture of Charlotte, this time with patients at http://bit.ly/hNYR6h]

The Bradford War Hospital was originally the Bradford Workhouse before becoming St Luke’s Hospital, Horton Lane, Bradford. In the early fifties, the artist David Hockey did his National Service as a  Conscientious Objector working as a porter at St Luke’s.

C. Bradshaw.

HE WHO HAS’T GIVEN US GRACE
YET MORE AND MORE WILL SEND
HE WHO HAS SET US IN THE RACE
WILL SPEED US TO THE END.

G.W. ?
CORPL R.F.A.

[R.F.A. is Royal Field Artillery]

St Lukes War Hospital Bradford 6/9/16

[from Frances Ridley Havergal’s The Unfailing One. This patient also gave Charlotte Bradshaw a copy of the Poems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, he inscribed a dedication there http://bit.ly/eLXAYw ]

Oh that some great inventor
Would patent make and sell
An Onion, with an onion taste
But with a Violet smell.

14486 H Kellett

Pte  A.V. Corp

[Army Veterinary Corps ?]

8/9/16

Ireland the first is my name
Australia is my nation
Homebush is my dwelling place
A place of happy habitation.
When I am dead and all my bones are (?)
This little bit will go to show
That I am not forgotten,

Horace

Pte No. 2655 H.E. Ireland

M.G.D. 2nd Pioneer Battn.
2nd Division
Australian Imp Force

(Australia for ever) + two days after ?

[The Australian archives have records for H.E. Ireland, a Law Clerk he was wounded, admitted to Bradford War Hospital for shell shock and subsequently discharged as medically unfit. http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp?B=7365239 ]

Jan 8th 1917

The finest Girl I ever saw
It was at in a ward on the 3rd Floor
I never saw a nicer Girl than Nurse Bradshaw
My best wish for she got on as well by lor
Were ever she may go
At present I can’t ? say more.

Pte H. Short

Canadains

Royal Army Medical Corps

G. Lam?

Pte RAMC (T)

Read see that me but not my got
up will I love if me love for
and you love you  love for be
down and you if find you you will

“Find me out”

A friend

War Hospital Bradford 

3/1/16

This world is but a fleeting show
For man’s illusion given
The smiles of joy, the tears of woe
There is none though but Heaven

G.W.W.

8/9/16

[from Thomas Moore’s This world is all a fleeting show]

Bradford War Hospital Jan 6 1917

This book is full of wishes
All very kind and true, but
Of all the wishes mine are all
For you.

Alfred W. Schillemore

46 Canadians
CEF

[A copy of his enlistment form can be seen here. He was an English born farmer from Higgar, Canada.]

MMG

William James Bradbury

[MMG is probably Motor Machine Gun]

Gather rosebuds while you may,
For old times are flying.
The same flowers that bloom today
Tomorrow may be dying.

Henry C. White
S.S. Benalla

25.2.20

[from Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time]

If the night would only last
And the daylght never come
In a love dream we would live
While our hearts beat fast
And only our lips were dumb
All alone, my dusky Queen
We would live and love unseen
Amid the singing of the woodbirds
And the -?

L Burrell

War Hospital Bradford