I was born Florence Ellen Wooster on 20th January 1876 at Laura Place in High Wycombe. I was called Flora and was the first of eight children born to my parents Thomas Wooster, a chair maker of High Wycombe and Ellen Charlotte Veary. They had married in the previous year. My mother had been widowed previously and my birth certificate erroneously gives my mother’s maiden name as Britter, the surname of her first husband.
I was baptised on the 23rd April 1885 at All Saints in High Wycombe when I was nine years old in a multiple Christening, along with my siblings Lily Elizabeth, William James and Albert Edward. My youngest brother and sister were yet to be born. At this point, the family were living at 4 Albert Street. By 1891 we had moved to the nearby 30 Duke Street and by 1895 we had moved again to 31 Gordon Road.
At the age of twenty-two, I married Herbert Barlow, a boot finisher aged 24, at All Saints on 24th December 1898. My father Thomas and sister Lily were witnesses. In 1899 Herbert and I lived at 412 Berkhamsted Road in Chesham, where our son Bertram Walter Barlow was born, but by 1904 we were back at the family home in Gordon Road, High Wycombe, where our daughter Constance Ellen was born and by 1911 we had moved the short distance to 7 Slater Street.
Herbert was then working in the local brewery. In 1914 the Great War began and our lives were to change. I was kept busy at home with young Constance, who was only 10 when the war began but, as the war dragged on, I became naturally fearful for Bertram who was to become Private 36179 with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was wounded in the latter half of 1918 but fortunately survived. I had worked for three years at the Wycombe VAD Hospital and on the 13th June 1918 I enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment Probationer Nurse (VAD Nurse) at the Military Hospital, Cambridge Road, Bethnal Green. The war was still ongoing, and the new threat of the Spanish Flu emerged that year, taking the lives of many of the WW1 men who are buried here in the cemetery.
VAD’s were numbered at around 74,000 in 1914 and upon the outbreak of war, many volunteered their services. The shortage of professional nurses paved the way for VAD’s to work in military hospitals, both at home and abroad, although many lacked the skills and discipline required and this initially led to an uneasy relationship between trained nurses and VAD’s. As the war progressed, these problems eased as a result of improved experience and training and professional nurses became more accepting of the contribution of the VAD’s.
Tragically my time at the Military Hospital in Bethnal Green was to last only four months as whilst I was there I went to visit my daughter in St Albans where I was suddenly taken ill. I was admitted to the hospital in St Albans but I had unfortunately fallen victim to the flu. I died on 23rd October 1918 aged 41 from influenza and double pneumonia. My home address was given as 7 Slater Street, High Wycombe.
I was buried here in the cemetery at High Wycombe and as it was a semi-military funeral it was quite a grand affair. My coffin, covered by the Union Jack, was borne on a gun-carriage, followed by three mourning carriages. The first part of the burial service was conducted at Trinity Congregational Church by the Reverend Gaut. Later the R.F.A. firing party under Lieutenant Allingham, fired three volleys over my grave and the trumpeters sounded the Last Post. My husband and daughter Connie were in attendance but sadly not our son, Bert, who had only recently returned wounded from France and was still in hospital back here in England. Many of my Wooster relatives attended, along with my colleagues from the Military Hospital in Bethnal Green, and nurses and wounded men from the VAD Hospital in High Wycombe. There were many floral tributes from family and friends including one from the boys of Ward 6 at the Bethnal Green Miltary Hospital.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, as part of the In From The Cold project have recognised that I died in war service and I now have a CWGC headstone for my grave. My husband Herbert and my sister Lily Elizabeth and are also buried in this plot. Herbert died in 1935 and Lily in 1954.
Researched by Nick Wooster of the Wooster Family Group and Sally Scagell, Lost The Plot
