Cora Beattie Roberton nee Anderson had a distinguished career as a nurse, serving in WW1, and was also a survivor of the ‘Elingamite’ disaster of 1902.
Cora was born on 4 March 1881 in Auckland, New Zealand, the fourth of eight children to Annie and William Anderson, a pioneering city engineer appointed under the newly formed Auckland City Council in 1871. From 1895 to 1890, she attended Auckland Girls’ Grammar School.
At the age of 21 in 1902, the passenger steamer Elingamite had been returning from Sydney to Auckland when in dense fog 35 miles north of Cape Reinga, struck rocks. On board were 136 passengers and 58 crew of whom 28 passengers and 17 of the crew died from drowning or exposure. Cora who was 21 years old was on the last lifeboat with her brother-in-law Dr Robert Beattie who was Medical Superintendent of the Auckland Lunatic Asylum (Carrington/Oakley Hospital).
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections NZG-19021115-1246-03
Completing her training at Thames Hospital in 1909, Cora registered as a nurse and undertook midwifery at St Helen’s Hospital, Auckland. By 1910, she served as matron of Gisborne’s Townley Maternity Home, then as a district nurse for Māori patients in Rotorua from 1912 to 1914, earning praise for her compassionate care before resigning to tend her ailing mother.
After war broke out in August 1914, Cora was one of the first selected for the contingent of 50 nurses to be sent for service under the direction of the British War Office. On August 13, 1915 Cora wrote to her brother “We are right in the thick of things, wounded and sick coming in faster than we can take them.” Stationed in Egypt’s No. 1 New Zealand General Hospital in Cairo, she tended Gallipoli’s wounded amid scorching tents and dysentery outbreaks. In 1916 she was promoted to the rank of Sister. Transferred to Britain that June via Hospital Ship Marama, she served as matron of facilities at Brockenhurst, Codford, and finally Hornchurch Convalescent Hospital in Essex (1917–1919), overseeing 2,500 beds and 20,000 patients with innovative physiotherapy. Her leadership earned a Mention in Despatches (1916), Associate Royal Red Cross (1917), and Royal Red Cross (1st Class, 1919), alongside campaign medals.
Nurses New Zealand General Hospital Cairo. Cora 3rd Row middle. AWMM
Suffering from stress and low blood pressure, Cora returned to New Zealand to recuperate. En route she remained in charge of all the nursing staff on board her ship. Cora arrived in New Zealand on 26 August 1919 and was discharged from service but remained on the Service and Temporary Reserve of the NZANS until official retirement in July 1921.
In August 1919, Cora married wounded Taranaki farmer Eric Butterfield Roberton on 1 October, in Remuera. They had met during his recovery at Hornchurch, England. Their union yielded daughter Elizabeth May (1925, a nurse) and son John Craig. Farming in Tahora until 1948, they relocated to Auckland’s Bucklands Beach and Remuera. Cora led the Auckland Returned Army Nursing Sisters Association for multiple terms, advocating for veterans.
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Cora Beattie Roberton
Died 1962
Block M Row 18 Plot 066
