Katy Beaufoy was killed on this day in 1918
Katy Beaufoy was born in Aston, Warwickshire, England in 1869. Her parents were Thomas (a clerk for the Post Office) and Susanna. She was one of five children, have two older twin brothers, and a younger brother and sister.
Katy trained as a nurse at Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in 1893. Within three years she had attained the position of Sister in charge of the Operating Theatre and within another three years she had become the Matron to the eighty-bed Exeter Fever Hospital.
She volunteered for the Second Boer War, served as a theatre sister and a nurse tutor in Italy. In 1908 she applied to join the Princess Christian's Army Nursing Service. In the meantime she had an active nursing career as theatre sister to a private surgeon then as a nurse tutor in Italy training local nurses.
On the 17 August 1914 she again volunteered for war service and was sent to Devonport Military Hospital and then to No 15 General Hospital in the former Abbasieh School at Alexandria. She then nursed aboard the Hospital Ship Dover Castle as Sister and at the 29th General Hospital in Malta before being promoted to Matron. Finally, she took up an appointment as Matron to the Hospital Ship Glenart Castle.
On leaving Bristol on a return journey to France to pick up the wounded, UC56 torpedoed the Glenart Castle which sank within 10 minutes killing the captain, 8 Nurses, 7 Medical officers , 47 Medical orderlies and 99 Patients. HMHS Glenart Castle sank at 4:00 am.
Nine boats were launched, but the ship sank in minutes. Katy Beaufoy was amongst their number. A diarist, her life story has since be published. Matron At War is a warm and insightful story.
Acting Matron Katy Beaufoy is commemorated on the Holybrook Memorial, Southampton
Memorial to those lost on the Hospital Ship Glenart Castle
Sources: England Census 1871, 1881, 1891, UK and Ireland, Find a Grave Index; UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919; England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915; Western Times 1 March 1918. The Daily Mirror, 1 March 1918. Military Hospitals in Malta.