the Department 1941-1943, Resident for Kolhapur and Deccan states 1944-1945, Resident for the Punjab states 1945-1947 and a political adviser to Lord Mountbatten. He was knighted in 1947 for services to British India.
milk powder. The hospital treated up to 600 patients a day, and Elspeth said ‘it was like an assembly line, babies were delivered in the corridor’. Elspeth was known for her high-speed efficient approach to nursing. She once administered over 700 separate inoculations in a day. To her children she was brisk and matter-of-fact, no days off school for illness, and off to England for boarding school.
With the threat of Japanese invasion, Elspeth was evacuated to Australia with her mother and sisters. The girls boarded at Clyde from 1941-1944, participating happily in school life. Among a range of activities, Audrey was house captain of Braemar and earned a Dux prize in 1944, Elspeth won the Prefects’ Prize and class reading prize in 1943, while Phyllis was voted Senior Belle on fancy dress night, dressed as an Indian beauty. Elspeth spent her childhood alongside Plum Haet (Rutherford) not only at Clyde but at the same prep school in Surrey, UK and then in India where both their fathers were posted with the British Raj. In 1944 after leaving Clyde, the three Thompson girls returned to India. In 1949, soon after the turbulent war of independence and partition, the Thompson family returned to the UK and settled in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire.
After 24 years in Zambia, the family returned to the UK in 1976. Tigger worked for the Zambian mines, based in London. Elspeth continued nursing; for a general practitioner, a school, a local fracture clinic and at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. At age 75 after a career spanning six decades, she finally retired, very reluctantly, when the hospital said she could no longer be insured. Elspeth was an energetic and compulsive networker long before the word was fashionable. She stayed in contact with all of her family including cousins round the world, with Clyde friends in Australia by letter, phone, and lastly by email. Each year she wrote numerous newsy Christmas cards and was always delighted to hear if her card was the first to arrive. The family house was festooned with cards received in return, and if anyone failed to reply, she would try to find out why. Over the years, Elspeth wrote to COGA expressing her thanks and delight in receiving the Cluthan, updating her news and that of other Clyde friends she had encountered.
Elspeth trained as a nurse at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, and then as a midwife in Edinburgh. After completing her training she went to Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) to work, joining her sister Phyllis whose husband was a colonial civil servant. In Zambia, Elspeth met and married her husband Oswald Woolcott (known as Tigger) in 1953. They had six children; Sandy, Christopher, Justin, Simon, Matthew and Clare. A republic since 1964, Zambia is a landlocked country bounded by the Congo, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. Most rural Zambians are subsistence farmers, subject to the vagaries of erratic rainfall and drought.
Elspeth was proud of her 17 grandchildren. Her daughter Clare and grand-daughter Anna Woolcott have followed Elspeth’s footsteps, making three generations of passionate and dedicated nurses at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Her son Justin said that while indignant about the physical restrictions of age in her final years, Elspeth’s mind remained sharp and her personality vivacious and friendly as ever.
After the children were born, Elspeth resumed her nursing work in Zambia, becoming matron of the local regional hospital, running various town clinics and even serving as a sales rep for Cow & Gate babies’
Information provided by Justin Woolcott, Elspeth Woolcott letters to COGA, the Oxford UK press, Cluthans 1941-1944 and the internet. Late notice: Barbara Joan Gilder 9 April 1928 – 5 April 2015 Clyde 1943-1945 The Clutha ferry passenger harbour steamers plied a service up and down the River Clyde in Glasgow from 1884-1903. They were collectively known as Cluthas. Passengers included workers commuting daily to the docks and industries along the river, such as shipyards and engineering workshops. Though quaint and sturdy, the Cluthas were superseded by Glasgow tram and subway services and withdrawn in 1903. 48