Gladys Elizabeth Clare Boon
From The Orange Wiki
BOON, Gladys Elizabeth Clare
Service no: Staff nurse [1]
Place of birth: Goulburn, 19 February 1891
Address: Orange
Occupation: Trained nurse
Next of kin: David William Boon (father), Abbington, Sale Street, Orange
Date of enlistment: 3 April 1917
Place of enlistment: N/A
Age at enlistment: 26
Fate: Embarked RMS Mooltan Melbourne 12 June 1917. Disembarked Suez 19 July 1917. Embarked Chagres at Port Said for Salonika 25 July 1917. Admitted to hospital Salonika suffering from debility 3 August 1918. Rejoined unit 17 August 1918. Admitted to hospital suffering from influenza 16 September 1918. Discharged from hospital 25 September 1918. Undertook a course in Domestic Economy at Battersea Polytechnic in London April to July 1919. Returned to Australia 23 August 1919.
Date of death: 25 November 1948, Manly
Gladys Elizabeth Clare Boon was born in Goulburn in 1891, the daughter of David and Elizabeth Boon. Her father, David, later joined the police force and the family relocated to Orange.
Nurse Boon trained at Orange District Hospital under Matron Dooly, resigning her position as head nurse in December 1916 to move to Sydney and work at Randwick Hospital.
She enlisted in April 1917 and embarked from Melbourne in June that year. Gladys served in Egypt and Salonika before undertaking a 3-month long course in Domestic Economy at Battersea Polytechnic in London in April 1919. She returned to Australia in August that year.
In July 1925 Gladys and Arthur Firkin were married at the Methodist Church in Orange. Gladys died in Manly in 1948.
Gladys’ name appears on the Methodist Church Orange Honour Roll.
Leader, 29 August 1919, p. 7.
Nurse Boon [2]
- Francis William Sabey (1892-1987) was a Yorkshireman who served in the Motor Transport section in Salonika during WWI. In September 1917 he was a patient of the 50th General Hospital, where he met Nurse Boon. An amateur artist, Sabey passed his time recovering from malaria painting landscapes and creating drawings, including this one of Nurse Gladys Boon.
