The Elizabeth Hudson Papers (MS 1464, online finding aid here) comprises four albums that provide eloquent visual testimony of one woman’s impact serving as a nurse in Paris during World War I. Elizabeth, a native of Syracuse, NY, was born in circa 1885 and died in 1973. 

The albums contain photographs of Paris during the war and document the American Red Cross Military Hospital No. 1 (also known as the American Ambulance Hospital), which occupied a just-finished building intended to be a school (Lycée Pasteur of Neuilly-sur-Seine), but that was converted for wartime use as a hospital.

Other photographs include patients in the hospital, the French trenches at the front, and scenes in the French countryside during the war. In addition to photographs, the albums hold printed wartime ephemera, correspondence, war memorabilia, and captions for many of the photographs. Two of the albums contain photographs of Ms. Hudson’s patients, both French and American, and notes from them documenting circumstances of their injuries and thanking her for her work as a nurse. There are tipped-in sheets containing typed translations into English of many of the notes from French patients.

Wounded GIs on a ward with Elizabeth Hudson and another nurse

Together the albums provide poignant documentation about the experiences of a young American woman in her early 30s and her impact on countless patients who passed through the World War I military hospital in which she was working.

There is a related collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (GEN MSS 28, online finding aid here) of materials documenting Elizabeth Hudson’s friendship between the wars with the Irish author Edith Somerville, as well as her involvement in relief efforts during World Wars I and II.

Nurses taking a lunch break in the Canteen.