Bradley, Annie Laura

Annie Bradley was born 29 January 1894 to John and Elizabeth Bradley in Eardley, Québec. Her father was a blacksmith and the 1891 Census shows a family of five children (a sixth would be added the next year), with Annie as the third child. There is little information on her early life, but she trained as a nurse and, for at least in the early part of the war, she was working in Quebec at a military hospital.

Annie made her way to the United Kingdom where she attested for the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) in London, England on 12 May 1915 at the age of 37, noting she was a professional nurse. She reported for duty with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in the United Kingdom at the Moore Barracks Hospital in Shorncliffe later that month. In February 1916 she went to France and spent most of the war at the Canadian No. 2 General Hospital at Le Treport. This unit received stabilized patients from the field hospitals and either returned them to their unit or sent them back to the United Kingdom to the Canadian Stationary Hospitals there for convalescence. Bradley stayed in France, except for a short bout of influenza in 1916, and returned to the United Kingdom in September 1918. There she was sent to the Canadian Special Hospital at Lenham, which largely took care of tuberculosis patients. At the end of the year she was assigned transport duty, looking after casualties on board the transport that took her back to Canada. On her arrival at the end of 1918 she was sent to the Manitoba Military Hospital at Tuxedo Park in Winnipeg. This was a facility which had been developed at the Winnipeg General Hospital and expanded to take care of soldiers suffering from “shell shock”. Shortly after her arrival in Winnipeg, Sister Bradley was awarded the Royal Red Cross 2nd class (London Gazette 31092) for her wartime service, a fact proudly noted in the Manitoba Free Press at the time. She completed her service at the Manitoba Military Hospital and was discharged in Winnipeg on 12 April 1920.

There is little record of her subsequent career and life. By 1945 had retired and was living in Vancouver. She evidently liked to travel as her name shows up in passenger manifests of early airline trips to San Francisco and Honolulu in the 1950’s. She died in her home in West Vancouver on 15 March 1960 and is buried there.