A Photograph of Beryl Kaighin Is Available at the Australian War Memorial

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BERYL KAIGHIN VAD

Beryl Kaighin was a junior teacher and cookery instructress who taught girls at a Victorian Education Department school, Montague Cookery Centre, in South Melbourne.[1]She had previously been a pupil at Melbourne High School ata time when it enrolled girls. While teaching at the cookery centre, she submitted an application to be a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and was accepted by the Defence Department, departingfor Egypt in August 1917. VADs supported the work of the Australian Red Cross in caring for Australian soldiers. Beryl worked in, then managed, the Red Cross Kitchen at No 14 Australian General Hospital, Cairo, almost certainly spending most time at Port Said where the hospital was re-located for much of the war.[2]Her patients included light horsemen, and probably many of Australia’s early enlistees. Men were sent to Port Said for prolonged rest when they were not recovering as quickly as they should from their illnesses and wounds. One of Beryl’s letters to Melbourne High School principal Joseph Hocking, written in June 1918, explained how she had ‘charge’ of the Red Cross Kitchen that was ‘doing the extras for bed patients, making now between 700 and 800 meals each day’.[3] With her domestic science background and management, Beryl probably contributed to the conclusion of the Australian Army Services in the War of 1914-18 that ‘[a]s much as possible was done [at Port Said] to supplement the ordinary rations’.[4]

Beryl returned to Australia to teach briefly before resigning to move to New Zealand to marry a former New Zealand soldier, Thomas Bassett. One of the last references to her in any Australian archival repositories is a letter written by her, in June 1922 to the British War Office, from New Zealand. The letter pleaded for a response to previous requests she had made in Australia for her ‘General Service Medal and Allied Medal’. She received the response from the British War Office in September 1922 that one medal would be posted to New Zealand, however, ‘As Egypt ceased to be a theatre of war after the 18th March 1916, you are not entitled to the award of the Victory Medal’.[5]

A photograph of Beryl Kaighin is available at the Australian War Memorial:

[1] Education Department of Victoria, Teacher Record, Beryl Magnay Kaighin, (Public Record Office, Victoria).

[2]Education Department of Victoria, The Education Department’s Record of War Service, 1914-1919, Albert J Mullett, Melbourne, 1921, p 150; and, AG Butler, ed, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914-1918, Australian War Memorial, Melbourne, 3 vols, 1930-1943, vol1, pp 642, 646, 652 and vol 3, pp 538, 567.

[3]Melbourne High School, ‘From a Red Cross Worker in Egypt’, Ours: The Magazine of Melbourne High School, May 1919, p 26. Beryl’s surname is misspelt ‘Raighin’.

[4] AG Butler, ed, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914-1918, Australian War Memorial, Melbourne, 3 vols, 1930-1943, vol 1, p 642.

[5] National Archives of Australia, accessed 29 January 2015: advice courtesy of Carole Hooper).