In Alexandria (Hadra) War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt is the Commonwealth War Grave of Nurse Marion Dorothy Chapman, who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, who died 10/08/1918.

Marion Dorothy Chapman, ‘Dorothy’, one of eleven children, was born at ‘Seacroft’ in South Shields on the 10th September 1890, the daughter of a Henry Chapman, (a Chartered Accountant), born 1851, died 5th February 1936, and Dora (nee Gibson), Chapman, born 1856, died 17th May 1938, she was the eldest daughter of a George Gibson, born 1825, died 30th January 1865, and his wife Marion Gibson, (born 29th August 1862), died 1940. Henry and Dora were married on the 8th August 1876 at St Peters Church in Harton, moving from his parents residence at Challoner Terrace, Westoe to 34 Winchester Street.

The other children were:-

• Ethel, born 3rd May 1877, died 10th December 1938.
• Henry, ‘Hal’ born 21st August 1878, died 29th January 1926.
• Robert Chapman, born 3rd March 1880, at 6 Wood Terrace, died 31st July 1968.
• George Gibson, born 3rd May 1882, died 31st December 1954, in Canada.
• Laurence Alfred Chapman, born 18th March 1886, died 3rd February 1943.
• Frederick Ernest Chapman, born 11th July 1887, died 8th May 1938.
• Charles Lancelot Chapman, born 1st August 1892, died 22nd August 1917.
• Alan Edward, born 1884, died 1898.
• Dora Elizabeth, ‘Bessie’  born 20th December 1884, died 26th July 1935, she married Wallace Moir Annand, [and they had one child Richard Wallace Annand ‘Dickie’].
• Hilda born 1881, died 6th July 1929, [she had married Sidney Howard Smith, (born 3rd February 1872), on the 18th October 1905, and in 1911 they were residing at ‘Beech’ Cottage, Rodborough, Near Stroud, Glocestershire, with one child Elizabeth Howard Smith, born 15th August 1906, baptised 10th February 1907, she died 12th November 1975].

Henry Chapman had built ‘Seacroft’ on the eastern edge of Westoe Village in 1887. It was a Mansion with over twenty rooms.

Marion Dorothy Chapman was educated at St Leonard’s, at St Andrew’s in Scotland from 1903 till 1908, she captained the Bishopshall East hockey team and was also Captain of the House and played lacrosse. It is at this school that Dorothy met Helene Paris MacGowan who would become her sister-in-law, as she married Robert Chapman, later Sir Robert Chapman on the 10th November 1909 at the East Church, Stirling.

In 1901 Marion Dorothy Chapman was residing at ‘Seacroft’ and in 1911 she was visiting ‘Woodville’, at Riding Mill, Northumberland, the family of Elizabeth Snowden Osbourne and Constance Margaret Foreman Osbourne.

In 1914 Dorothy entered the Ladies single tennis tournament and won the final at the Westoe Lawn Tennis Club. In 1915 Dorothy after training at the Ingham Infirmary,  joined the nursing staff at the 2nd Durham Voluntary Aid Hospital at Holborn House, Mill Dam, South Shields. She moved to Alnwick and was with the 8th Northumberland Voluntary Aid Hospital which was transferred to Alnwick Camp in April 1916. On the 3rd January 1917, Dorothy was at Lakenham Military Hospital in Norfolk. She arrived in Alexandria, in Egypt, in October 1917, and was based at the 17th General Hospital, which used to be the Victoria College before the Army requisitioned it for a Military Hospital.

When it was decided to undertake operations in the Dardanelles, four general hospitals were sent to Egypt from the United Kingdom, to act as base hospitals for the force. Two (Nos. 15 and 17) arrived in March, and the other two (Nos. 19 and 21) at the beginning of June 1915. They were all opened in Alexandria, No. 15 in the “Abbassia” Schools, No. 17 in the Victoria College, No. 19 in the Deaconesses’ Hospital, a German hospital, and No. 21 in Ras-el-Tin barracks. They were nominally under the administrative control of the D.M.S. of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Surg.-General W. G. Birrell, whose representative in Egypt was Colonel Sexton, the A.D.M.S. of the Base at Alexandria.
Source: Medical Services General History Volume III (Medical Services during the Operations on the Western Front in 1916, 1917 and 1918; in Italy; and in Egypt and Palestine), by Major-General Sir W. G. Macpherson.

Marion Dorothy Chapman died on the 10th August 1918 of Spanish Flu, which had started in June and would cause millions of deaths across the World.

She is buried in Hadra War Memorial Cemetery.

Three of her brothers served in WW1, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Chapman D.S.O., 4th (Northumbrian) Howitzer Brigade RFA, died 31st July 1963, aged 83 and Major Charles Lancelot Chapman M.C. + M.in D., ‘D’ Battery 173 Brigade RFA, died of Wounds 22nd August 1917, aged 25 and Frederick Ernest Chapman, Surgeon and R.A.M.C.

Research: James Hoy Archive /James Pasby /Imperial War Museum /The British Newspaper Archive /The Red Cross.

There is an excellent book on the Chapman family titled A Tyneside Heritage by Mr Peter S. Chapman. The History Press 2021. ISBN 978 075099626 6.

Marion Dorothy Chapman is remembered at Gateshead on G39.030, at South Shields on S86.027 in S86.086, page 3, S86.137 and at Westoe in W101.05.

She is also remembered on the V.A.D. Roll of Honour at York Minster to members of the Order of St John and the British Red Cross remembered on the ‘Five Sisters’ Memorial Window