Plate

Creativity from the trenches

This engraved aluminium plate was probably made by soldiers recuperating in a hospital at Steenvorde in northern France where New Zealand nurse, Margaret (Daisy) Hitchcock, was working. Margaret Hitchcock nursed for the duration of the First World War. She first served with the French Flag Nursing Corps and then with the New Zealand Military Nursing Service.

The plate is significant as an example of trench art or rehabilitation craft made during the Great War. The small plate has a scalloped edge, and has been decorated by hand using a small chisel beaten to create marks on the surface. The semi-circles which make up the scalloped edge of the plate are each edged with engraved marks. The centre of the plate features an engraved picture of a village with a windmill, church and houses, hills in the background and in the foreground fields, a river with one sailing boat, a tree and a fence. A banner is engraved across the top of the picture on which the words 'SOUVENIR DE STEENVORDE' are inscribed.

A gift for a nurse

Margaret Hitchcock was born in 1883 to parents Maria and Henry Hitchcock of Wellington. She trained as a nurse and left Wellington in 1910, with her friend Lily Lind, to undertake midwifery training in Dublin, Ireland. On completion of the training, they travelled to England, and were living in London working privately as nurses when war broke out in 1914. The French Flag Nursing Corps, like the French Red Cross, accepted volunteers of all nationalities, providing board and lodging, or an allowance for such. Hitchcock and Lind were among a small group of New Zealand nurses already in England who joined the French Flag Nursing Corps and quickly travelled to France. She was stationed initially at Rouen, then posted to a military hospital at Steenvoorde where she probably acquired this item.

During her service in the War, Hitchcock received a small collection of trench art and rehabilitative art from soldiers she cared for.