Harriet Wheelock / Monday 13 September 2010 For King and Country – Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital and the First World War The outbreak of war in 1914 was to have a huge impact on many medical professionals and services, and in Ireland this was especially the case at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. Through its association with Trinity College Dublin and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Dun's Hospital was a predominantly protestant institution and a supporter of British Rule in Ireland. From the very outset of the war the hospital was to lose staff to the war effort as nurses and doctors left to join the British Army. This letter was written at the end of August 1914 by Alexandra, widow of King Edward VII, in it she thanks the hospital for the 'response made to our appeal for nurses'. As Queen Alexandra had been noted for her charity works and when in 1902, during the Boer War, a nursing service was established in the British Army it had been named for her – Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service. Alexandra remained an active supporter of the Service, and on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 had made a personal appeal for nurses to join up. The archive of Dun's Hospital also show that a considerable number of former and current members of the medical staff also left the hospital to join the Royal Army Medical Corps. A complete roll of honour listing all those former members of staff who had served during the war is currently undergoing conservation. More poignant is the board of photographs of 29 former members of staff who were killed during the war, including several who had not completed their medical training before joining the Army. As well as providing medical personnel for the army, Dun's Hospital also provided accommodation for wounded soldiers returning from the front. I talked in an earlier post about the hospital role during the 1916 Rising, the matron's report from the time states that the soldiers recuperating in the hospital willingly gave up their beds to sleep on the floor, as wounded soldiers were brought in from the Dublin streets. Dun's Hospital's contribution to the war effort was acknowledge in 1920 when they received a certificate of thanks from the War Office, with a covering letter from Winston Churchill, then Secretary for War and Air.