Nurse Beatrice Milner, Civilian.
Beatrice Milner is the only female civilian commemorated at the War Memorial in Ossett. She is buried almost 300 miles away at Teignmouth Old Cemetery in Devon.
Beatrice Milner was born on the 1st May 1891, the daughter of Abraham Greaves Milner and his wife Annie Maria (nee Greaves) who married at Dewsbury All Saints Church on the 1st June 1878. Annie Maria of Dewsbury was the daughter of Inn Keeper, Mark Greaves and Abraham was the son of Ossett manufacturer, Thomas Milner.
Beatrice was baptised at St. Mary’s Church, Gawthorpe and Chickenley Heath on the 1st March 1902, by which time she was 10 years of age. Her parents were living at High Street, Gawthorpe and her father was a manufacturer. By 1911 the Milners, who had five surviving children from their marriage, were living at 5, High Street, Gawthorpe. Abraham was now working as a woollen manufacturer.
During WW1 the manufacture of army blankets in West Yorkshire was predominantly done in Batley, Dewsbury, Morley and Ossett. Abraham was in business with his father, manufacturing blankets, at Thomas Milner & Son. His brothers were in the rag and waste wool trade so it's likely that many of the Milners were involved in the production of these blankets which were mostly made from shoddy (scraps of wool and fibre collected by the rag trade).
Beatrice Milner became a nurse. No records have been found of her nursing career, but it assume to have started after 1921. At that time, she still lived in Gawthorpe along with her sister Fanny and their father Abraham. Their mother died in 1915; no doubt, they will have done their daughterly duty by caring for her, and subsequently their father prior to his death in 1927.
Teignmouth was the target of 21 bombing raids between July 1940 and February 1944, and around 80 high explosives and a thousand incendiaries spread across the town. Local reports recorded that the worst hit were the homes of the working class, 79 civilians were killed and more than a hundred and fifty were wounded. Of their homes, 228 houses were completely destroyed and thousands more were damaged. The Town Hall managed to survive a direct hit, but the hospital was wiped out.
Teignmouth Hospital was opened in Mill Lane in 1925 by Lady Cable of Shute House, but building there was not fully completed until just before WW2 broke out. The hospital had two wards with 10 beds each, four private wards, an operating theatre and X-ray facilities.
On May 1st 1941, Beatrice celebrated her 50th birthday (elsewhere her age is recorded as 49). A week later, Nurse Beatrice Milner was killed in a German air raid on Kingsdown Road, Teignmouth, Devon, which took place on the 8th May 1941, damaging Teignmouth hospital, where she was working, and adjacent buildings. During the German air raid, eleven people were killed: seven patients and three nurses, plus one person living at the house next door. Miss Mules, a local doctor, owned 'Lareys', where Nurse Milner lived, which before the war was a convalescent home. The hospital wasn't rebuilt until 1954.
Above: The bombed out remains of Teignmouth Hospital after the German air raid in May 1941, where Nurse Beatrice Milner lost her life.
Beatrice Milner, nurse of 'Lareys', Dawlish Road, Teignmouth, died at Teignmouth Hospital on the 8th May 1941 aged 49 years and is commemorated at St. George's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, London.1 She never married.
My thanks to Anne-Marie Fawcett for her additional research on the life of Beatrice Milner.
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