Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Before the war

Constance Jessie Brooks (1888–1966), who served with the Australian Army Nursing Service in India from 1917 to 1919, was the daughter of Yates and Emma Brooks (nee Mullen).

Constance’s father Yates had come to Victoria at the age of 13 with his parents John and Eliza and five siblings. The family had left their home city of Liverpool in November 1853 aboard the ‘Marco Polo’, one of the fastest and most popular of the ships that brought thousands of new settlers to the gold rushes in Victoria. A hotelkeeper and brewer in Liverpool (1841 Census; Manchester Baptismal Register), 57 year old John no doubt saw ample opportunity for his family in the colony. He was listed as a ‘gentleman’ on the passenger manifest, and his two eldest sons (18 and 16) each as ‘clerk’. He died in Kensington-hill near Melbourne in 1871 (still a ‘gentleman’ on his probate papers), and Eliza died four years later in 1875 (Argus 22.7.1871, p1; 26.7.1875, p4; 24.8.1875, p8, 17.9.1875).

Like his brothers, Yates too became a clerk. He joined the colony’s customs and trade administration as a young man and spent his adult life in its employ (Victoria, Government Gazette, 1881, p176; Argus, 26.10.1896, p1). That he had a keen sense of professional and social aspiration is suggested by his presence at Government House levees in the 1860s (in the ‘general presentations’ attendees category), on the Queen’s Birthdays for example, and at the welcome to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867.

In 1874, Yates married Emma Mullen (c1859-1940) in Holy Trinity Church of England, Williamstown. On the marriage certificate, her age was 18, his 35. Emma's father Charles was a government officer like Yates, so he may well have married the daughter of a colleague. Notice of the marriage, and the subsequent births of their children, appeared in the local papers (e.g. Argus, 20.1.1874, p1; Australasian, 24.1.1874, p25). The couple had nine children (eight surviving) between 1875 and 1892. Born in 1888, Constance was the eighth child and the fourth of five daughters.

By 1888, Yates had an established career in the Department of Trade and Customs in colonial Victoria. His role included for a time ‘keeper and locker of the hulk “Empire”, used as a public magazine and bonded warehouse for the storage of dynamite etc in Hobson’s Bay’ (Argus, 18.3.1882, p10).

The year Constance was born, Yates and the family went to the Murray River town of Echuca on his appointment as collector of customs there (these being the days of tolling on crossing colonial borders). Eighteen months later, Yates and the family returned to Melbourne after a sale of ‘the whole of his household effects and furniture’ from his Echuca residence (Riverina Herald, 11.11.1889, p3). They moved to East St Kilda. One last child was born in 1892.

In 1896 Yates died aged 58. He was at the time ‘late H.M. Customs’, so may well have retired with ill-health. His estate was valued at just under £600. Emma became a widow with seven children, ranging in age from 20 to 4. Constance was 6.

According to Constance’s son, Constance and her sisters were educated at home with a governess (Yates’ probate showed that the Brooks’ home in East St Kilda included a schoolroom.) After Yates’ death, Constance and her youngest sister Winifred attended a tiny private school; coincidentally, one of her teachers re-entered Constance’s later life as a senior nurse in the Australian Army Nursing Service.

In 1903, when Constance was 15, Emma moved to East Melbourne. She rented all or part of a large terrace at 144 Clarendon St and lived with at least some of her children until 1921. Other members of the family rented a house nearby at 90 Gipps St. during some of those years.

Constance presumably lived at 144 Clarendon St in her teens and adulthood until she embarked on a nursing career about 1913. By then in her mid 20s, she trained at the Melbourne Hospital and the Bendigo Hospital, and completed her examinations for the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses Association in 1916 (Age, 22.6.1916, p8).

None of her sisters were nurses, so Constance was not following in their footsteps. The attraction of nursing, her son recalled her saying, was the opportunity it gave for travel. Nursing was certainly a mobile profession, providing single women in their 20s and 30s with passage from rural areas to the city, from one Australian colony to another, and from Australia to Britain and other countries. The outbreak of war and despatch of nurses overseas dramatically increased the opportunity for travel.

War service

Constance was encouraged about travel by her friend from Melbourne Hospital training days, Mimie Proctor. Mimie enlisted in the AANS and embarked for overseas in 1915. She served in Egypt, on Lemnos and then in France, and was later decorated with the Royal Red Cross (1st Class).

Constance applied to join the Australian Army Nursing Service on completing her training and registration requirements in mid 1916. As regulations necessitated, she was initially on ‘home service’. She nursed troops invalided from the front and troops from training camps at No 5 Australian General Hospital in St Kilda Rd, Melbourne.

Although Constance always said her primary motivation for enlisting was travel, her application to enlist also coincided with the departure of her married brother Chassie for the Western Front. Chassie had enlisted in mid 1915, and worked as a transport driver in and around Melbourne. He sailed for France on 3 June 1916 with the newly raised 3rd Division (3rd Divisional Train).

Chassie and Constance were the only two members of the family to serve in the AIF.

Constance was 28 when she joined the AANS. She was described on her attestation form as 5’3”, 8st 10lbs, of fair complexion with brown hair and brown eyes. She named her mother, Mrs Yates Brooks of 144 Clarendon St, East Melbourne, as her next of kin, and nominated 144 Clarendon St as her permanent address.

The siblings’ paths did not cross overseas. Chassie served in France in 1917 and 1918, where he was hospitalised on several occasions and then in England, before he was discharged as medically unfit in late 1918.

Neither did Constance join her good friend Mimie on the Western Front. Constance served in India for two years, posted to several hospitals and on transport duty to and from Bombay. Over 500 members of the AANS served in India, although it was not recognised officially as a theatre of war.

Constance was one of 49 nurses (11 sisters, 38 staff nurses) who left Melbourne on RMS ‘Mooltan’ on 26 December 1916, bound for India.  She disembarked in Bombay (Mumbai) on 1 January 1917.

According to her service record (naa.gov.au), she was sent almost immediately from Bombay to the 18 British Station Hospital in Rawalpindi. Situated some 1600 kms away on the North West Frontier bordering Afghanistan, on the southern slopes of the Himalayan mountains, Rawalpindi was the second largest military station in India. The station hospital had been opened early in 1917 to deal with casualties from border fighting around Waziristan, actions that were allegedly fomented by Turkish and German interests. Brooks was one of five Australian nurses there. The patients were primarily severe heat stroke cases, many of whom were mentally affected (Marianne Barker, Nightingales in the Mud: The Digger Sisters in the Great War, 1989, pp81-82).

When 18BSH closed in June 1917, Constance was posted to the Victoria War Hospital back in Bombay. Opened in 1916, that hospital was set up in a modern four storey building built for the Indian Provincial Railway. The nurses were accommodated on the top floor, above three floors of 200 bed wards.

Constance nursed there from June to November 1917. Initially, the hospital’s patients were mainly Turkish prisoners from German East Africa and Mesopotamia. The condition of the prisoners was appalling: neglected by their medical officers, they arrived at Victoria War Hospital filthy with septic wounds, limbs needing amputation, and no English. The death rate was high; those who recovered were sent to the 34 Welsh General Hospital in Deolali to convalesce (Barker, Nightingales in the Mud, pp74-75).

The departure of the first Turkish prisoners was followed by an avalanche of heat stroke casualties from Mesopotamia in August 1917 – as many as 1000 a week arrived at the hospital. Constance and her colleagues spent hours sponging their patients. The most severely affected developed a form of epilepsy, with fitting.

After several months at Victoria War Hospital, Constance was posted to temporary transport duty on His Majesty’s Hospital Ship ‘Ellora’. The usual route for ‘Ellora’ was across the Persian Gulf from Basra at the top of the Gulf, to Bombay. It carried sick and wounded troops and prisoners of war from German East Africa and Mesopotamia, suffering in the main from severe heat stroke, dysentery and paratyphoid. Many had already been transported from the front on river steamers before boarding the hospital ships and so were often in a parlous condition. In addition, the heat and humidity were intense, and the nurses’ traditional starched collars were abandoned (Barker, Nightingales in the Mud, p67ff, 75).

Her service on the hospital ship made her eligible for the British War Medal; service in India alone (not a declared theatre of war) was not sufficient in itself.

Constance was promoted to sister in October 1918.

After serving on ‘Ellora’ from November 1917 to June 1918, Constance was posted to Gerard Freeman Thomas Hospital in Bombay. Like the other British War Hospitals in Bombay, Freeman Thomas received sick and wounded troops from the front in Mesopotamia, and was staffed mainly by Australian nurses and British medical officers. It too was a converted civic building. Many of the patients suffered from heat stroke, malaria or dysentery. There is no written record of Constance’s experience there but another Victorian nurse at Freeman Thomas wrote she 'liked it fairly well', adding 'some of the sisters are Eurasian but they are mostly nice women' (Lilydale Express, 21.6.1918).

In her time off duty, Constance and the other nurses undoubtedly explored the sights of Bombay and its surrounds - the Victoria Gardens, zoo, bazaars, Bandra Point and native villages. There was no evidence on her service record of ill-health during her service in India.

Constance was at the Freeman Thomas Hospital when the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918.

Constance’s service record recorded little detail beyond the names and dates of the postings above. There was no record in it, for example, of where she spent her leave (a month for each year of war service). However, she did travel around India. She particularly enjoyed a trip to Kashmir, probably when stationed at Rawalpindi some 200 km away. The 1600 km train journey from Bombay to Rawalpindi in itself would have been an eye opening experience for the young nurse.

Constance also spoke of serving on a hospital ship between Cape Town and Port Said in Egypt (the ‘Ellora’s’ usual route was the Persian Gulf). The ship picked up wounded soldiers and prisoners of war from the conflicts in German East Africa. She enjoyed Cape Town. She also travelled to Egypt, on transport duty and/or on leave – a photograph shows her with other nurses and officers visiting the sphinx and pyramids.

After the war

Of the 500 nurses who served in India, 20 of them married there (Barker, Nightingales in the Mud, p82).

Constance Brooks was one of them. On 7 January 1919 in the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name, Bombay, Sister Constance Jessie Brooks AANS wed Major Charles John Emil Clerici of the Royal Engineers. They had met in an officers’ club in Bombay. The marriage was publicised in the Times of India (20.3.1919) She was 31, Church of England and Australian born; he was 46, Roman Catholic and born in Calcutta (www.fibis.org). She resigned from the AANS on her marriage, as regulations required her to do.

John Clerici (1877-1938) was the son of Ernesto and Louisa Clerici (nee Martinelli), who had married in Calcutta in 1875 (www.fibis.org). He had joined the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department in 1900 (Record of Services, India Office List, 1933 findmypast.co.uk). He was commissioned in the Indian Army and served in Iraq (Mesopotamia), Kurdistan and South Persia. He was in charge of postal arrangements for the Indian Expeditionary Force there, a role described in the Times of India (30.9.1916, p10) as ‘exceedingly arduous and difficult’. He was mentioned in despatches on six occasions and made a Companion of the Indian Empire (CIE) in 1916, and appointed to the Order of the British Empire in the Military Division (OBE) in 1918.

After the war, Clerici returned to Mesopotamia as deputy director of the postal service. He was credited with establishing the first air postal service there with India. He and Constance lived in Baghdad, where their first child was born in 1920. The family returned to Australia soon after, and their second child was born there the following year. That year, 1921, with John’s assistance (i.e. a formal letter in his precise hand and tone) Constance sought to have her service medals presented by the governor-general at the same ceremony as John was to receive his. The letter stated Constance was accompanying her husband ‘who is going to India for service’ so the upcoming presentation was the ‘only opportunity except in the very distant future’. Her medals were not available for presentation, but John did receive his decorations from the governor-general (Constance Brooks, Service Record; Argus, 21.9.1921, p10).

John was returning to India for an appointment with Indian Postal Service. He held increasingly senior positions including postmaster-general in various provinces. He and Constance were mentioned in the Times of India on various occasions, mingling with and entertaining leading British and Indian families (e.g. Times of India, 7.3.1929, p15, 10.6.1929, p15, 16.9.1929, p15, 8.2.1930, p14). His highest position was senior deputy director general of the postal service in Bengal and Assam in 1931. He was described as ‘a most popular officer’. Clerici attributed ‘all his success … to the co-operation of the staff. His was a reflected glory … Tremendous problems … all vanished like dew before the rising sun with the utmost help and co-operation of the departmental heads’ (Times of India, 28.3.1930, p14).

The Clerici family travelled to Australia regularly every few years on long service leave and for their birth of their third child in 1930 (e.g. UNA Vol XXVIII (7), 1.7.1930, p208). With John’s retirement, they lived permanently in Melbourne from about 1931. In 1935, Constance became treasurer for a newly established group of nurses who had served in India whose purpose was to work for charitable causes (UNA, Vol XXXIII (1), 1.10.1935, 310).

John died in 1938, aged 62. The cessation of his pension on his death left Contance under some fiancial pressure so she resumed nursing for a time to support their children. 

Constance died in 1966 in Beaumaris, Melbourne.

Constance Brooks was one of the nurses featured in the East Melbourne Historical Society's exhibition 'Gone to War as Sister: East Melbourne Nurses in the Great War', held in 2015. Her panel can be seen at

Constance Brooks - exhibition panel 4

By Peter Fielding:

Constance and Charles had three children,  Constance Ruth, who was born on 20th March  1920 in Baghdad and died on the 7th June 1999, John Winton who died on the 24th June 1946, and Phillip who was bornon the 5 April 1930 and is still alive at the time of writing [ August 2014] Constance died at Beaumaris in 1966. 

I had the pleasure of meeting Phillip in August 2014 and spending several hours talking about his family and his memories of his Mother. The family collection of historical photos is extensive and I have made arrangedments for these to be reproduced and to be included in this story.

Chassie Winton Brooks is Constance's brother and he also served in the AIF during WW1 and his story is also featured in the East Melbourne Historical Society collection.

Relationship: 
Brother of Chassie Winton Brooks

Acknowledgments: 
Many thanks to Phillip Clerici, Constance's son, and Paul Clerici, her grandson, for information and photographs from their private collection. 

This essay with additional photographs was originally published on the East Melbourne Historical Society website, emhs.org.au