Goole matron Lucy Liptrot

 The leaves are coming off the trees in the garden and lying in a carpet on the ground. But I like walking on them and Molly likes snuffling looking for interesting hidden treasures! I have now had my booster jab and after a couple of days lying around drinking tea and doing little I now feel a little more secure going out and about.

Both the history groups I attend in Howden and Goole are having a break until January but that does not mean that we are stopping researching. Topics we have been looking at in Goole are doctors, the shops and businesses in Bridge Street and the Doyle Street mission chapel. Goole has always been ever changing and the Bridge Street area has within living memory changed from a mix of docks, shops and housing  to a largely commercial street.

I became interested in a lady who was the matron of Goole Bartholomew Hospital from 1927 to 1952. This began when I was looking through some pictures and came across this clipping from the Goole Times

 Sitting in the middle of a group of gentlemen in 1948 was matron Lucy Liptrot. And the caption told us that she was an amazing woman who used to do all the X rays herself as well as organising the kitchens and nurses and helping out in the operating theatre.

So I thought I would see what else I could find out about her. She was born in Pemberton in Lancashire in 1889 where her father was a grocer.

She trained as a nurse at Hope Hospital, Salford and  during the First World war she joined the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service [QAIMNS] and served in England, firstly at Pembroke Dock and later at Southampton. She served from 1918 to 1919  caring latterly for flu victims and then in the reserves.

I was able to download her military records [all 51 pages of them] from the National Archives which presently offers free downloads.

 Lucy Liptrot's reference from her military records

Lucy Liptrot in her QAIMNS uniform.

She was a staff nurse at Northampton when she came to Goole in March 1927 to become matron at Bartholomew hospital. She never married and died in June 1952, having resigned as matron four months earlier due to ill health. Her funeral was at Liverpool with a memorial service being held at the same time at Goole Bartholomew hospital attended by doctors and staff. At a meeting of the Goole Howden and Selby hospital management committee that week Sir Harold Wilberforce Bell [of Portington], the chairman, paid tribute to her as a splendid woman beloved by all those with whom she came into contact. 

I was surprised to find her in 1933 travelling on board a passenger ship to Malta and then back a few weeks later from Brisbane. When I looked more carefully there were soldiers and sailors and another  nurse aboard and can only guess she was perhaps asked as a reservist to do this. She gave her address then as Bartholomew Hospital, Goole, as incidentally she did on her death. It was her home.