Remembering Sister Jessie McRobbie

As I acknowledged in my biography of Jeanie McClymont, nurses selflessly put their own lives at risk treating Spanish flu patients. Sister Jessie McRobbie is another. Jessie succumbed to influenza and pneumonia on November 7th 1918 in Bagthorpe Military Hospital, Nottingham aged thirty-two. She was repatriated to her home town of Crieff and interred in Ford Road Cemetery. Her funeral took place on Armistice Day; after co-orchestrating outdoor prayers in Crieff Town Centre with fellow clergymen from local churches, the Reverend Andrew Campbell of St Michael’s (latterly Crieff Parish Church) was driven to the cemetery to officiate at Jessie’s funeral. Her grave is marked by a CWGC headstone and is in excellent condition.

Jessie Elizabeth McRobbie was born on July 31st 1884 at Tomaknock on the eastern edge of Crieff to joiner John and Helen (nee Halley). She was one of ten children, and the third-youngest of her siblings. Sadly, Jessie at the age of eight, Jessie was to lose her mother in 1893. Her father would follow a mere eight years later. Before his death in 1901, Jessie still resided in the family home at in Crieff.

Jessie later left Crieff to train as a nurse at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow. The 1911 Census confirms Govanhill as her district of residence. She completed her formal training in 1914 and would rise to the rank of ‘Sister’.

In 1917 she enlisted in Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) and was eventually stationed at Bagthorpe Hospital where she died.

Jessie was unmarried at her death and had no offspring. Alongside her CWGC headstone, she is commemorated locally on Crieff’s War Memorial on Comrie Road and the St Michael’s Church memorial. She is also acknowledged, along with fellow nurses, on memorials in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh and York Minster.

Sources: ScotlandsPeople, Ancestry, Strathearn Herald, Crieff in the Great war by A Campbell (1925).