Partner Mairi Chisholm
Queer Places:
1 Barnfield Crescent, Exeter, Devon
Earl Haig
Homes in Park Lane, Ashtead, Surrey
Randalls Park Crematorium
Leatherhead, Mole Valley District, Surrey, England
Hotel Ariane, Slachthuisstraat 58, 8900 Ieper, Belgium
Elsie
Knocker, later Baroness de T'Serclaes, MM, OStJ (29 July 1884 – 26 April 1978)
was a British nurse and ambulance driver in World War I who, together with her
friend Mairi Chisholm, won numerous medals for bravery and for saving the lives of
thousands of soldiers on the Western Front in Belgium. Dubbed "The Madonnas
of Pervyse" by the press,[1][2] the
two were among the most photographed women of the war. Mairi Chisholm and
Elsie Knocker shared a private bedroom and double bed for four years while
stationed at Pervyse. Elsie Knocker donated the diary in which she recorded
her four years in Pervyse with Mairi Chisholm to the Imperial War Museum with
no apparent sense that their relationship might be interpreted in sexual
terms.
She was born Elizabeth Blackall Shapter in Exeter, Devon on
29 June 1884, the youngest of five children to Dr. Lewis Shapter (son of Thomas Shapter (1809–1902), the noted physician and epidemiologist) and Charlotte Bayly. Her father was the surgeon at the Royal Devon. During her childhood she picked up the nickname, "Elsie".[3] She
was orphaned at an early age. Her mother died when she was four years old and
her father died from tuberculosis two
years later. She was subsequently adopted by Lewis Edward Upcott, a teacher
at Marlborough
College, and his wife Emily who sent her to be educated at St.
Nicholas's, Folkestone,
and then at the exclusive Château Lutry in Switzerland.
After training at the Children's Hip Hospital at Sevenoaks,
she married Leslie Duke Knocker in 1906, with whom she had a son, Kenneth
Duke, a year later.[3] But
the marriage failed and soon after she was divorced she began training as a midwife at Queen
Charlotte's Hospital. Since being divorced was a status frowned upon in Edwardian
England, Knocker invented the myth that her husband had died in Java,
leaving her a widow.[4]
Being a divorcee/widow and single mother, however, hardly kept Knocker away
from her passions. She became an ardent amateur motorbike enthusiast and when
riding wore a dark green leather skirt and long leather coat buttoned all the
way down with a belt "to keep it all together"[5] designed
by Dunhill. She
earned the name "Gypsy"
because of her love of the open road and membership of the Gypsy Motorcycle
Club. She possessed a number of motorbikes including a Scott,
a Douglas solo,
and a Chater-Lea with a
sidecar which would travel with her to the Western Front.
Knocker and Chisholm in their converted Wolseley Ambulance, Pervyse, Belgium, c. 1916
Knocker and Chisholm pose in the ruins of a church in Pervyse, Belgium for "Illustrated War News", 22 April 1917
Chisholm and Knocker wearing their Tommy helmets. Pervyse, Belgium, c. 1917
Chisholm and Knocker display their Order of Léopold II, medals. On their headscarves is the insignia of the Belgian Army's 3rd Division, c. 1918
Knocker and Chisholm on the cover of "Home Chat" magazine, 11 April 1918
Knocker and Chisholm outside their advanced dressing station, Pervyse, Belgium, c. 1918
Elsie and Mairi
Elsie Knocker with her Chater-Lea v-twin sidecar outfit, with an unknown passenger in the sidecar.
Elsie Knocker with her Douglas Ladies’ Model flat twin ca.1912, and her dashing leather Dunhill outfit
When war was declared in 1914, Knocker wrote to her friend and fellow
motorcycle fanatic, Mairi
Chisholm, that there was "work to be done",[3] and
suggested they go to London to become dispatch riders for the Women's
Emergency Corps. When Chisholm was chosen to join Hector
Munro's Flying
Ambulance Corps she was able to convince Munro to accept Knocker as well,
as she had some training as a nurse, was an excellent mechanic and chauffeur,
and spoke both French and German. This meant that Knocker had to cancel a
"ladies stiff reliability trial" with "plenty of hairpin
bends"[4] over
120 miles of Hampshire and Dorset countryside.
The day before she was due to ship out she wrote in her diary: "This time
tomorrow night I shall be in Belgium… in the midst of all the terrors of war."[6]
In the early evening of 25 September 1914, Knocker, Chisholm and the other
volunteers (which included Dorothie
Feilding and May
Sinclair) followed Dr. Munro down the gang-plank of the S.S. Princess
Clementine at Ostend, West
Flanders.[4] Whilst
visiting the town of Nazareth (8
miles south-west of Ghent where
the corps was initially quartered) Knocker was witness to the aftermath of a
massacre when she came across 26 Belgian military
policemen who had been shot and mutilated by the Germans.[3] At
the end of October, the corps relocated to Furnes in
unoccupied Belgium, near Dunkirk,
where the women worked tirelessly picking up wounded soldiers mid-way from the
front and bringing them back to their field hospital at the rear. Knocker and
Chisholm soon came to the conclusion that they could save more lives by
treating the wounded directly on the front lines. In November, the two decided
to leave the corps and set up their own dressing
station five miles east in a town named Pervyse,
north of Ypres,[3] just
one hundred yards from the trenches.
Here, in a vacant cellar which they named the "Poste de Secours Anglais"
("British First Aid Post"),
the two would spend the next three and a half years aiding the wounded in the
Belgian sector. Knocker gave most of the medical attention, while Chisholm
transported the injured, often in terrible conditions and under fire, to a
base hospital 15 miles away.[7] No
longer affiliated with the Belgian
Red Cross, they were forced to raise their own funds. With donations they
arranged for the cellar to be reinforced with concrete and had a steel door
fitted, supplied by Harrods.[8] Through
sheer perseverance Knocker was able to arrange for the two of them to be
officially seconded to the Belgian garrison stationed there. Equipped with
cameras, both women photographed not
only each other but also much of the suffering around them.[9] In
January 1915, they were rewarded for their courageous work on the front lines
when they were both decorated by King
Albert I of Belgium with the Order
of Léopold II, Knights Cross (with palm).[10]
In January 1916 Knocker was married again, to Baron Harold de T'Serclaes, a
pilot in Belgian Flying Corps. The newly formed Baroness wrote of her
marriage: "So much of me went into my work that I suppose I was easily swept
along on a tide of glamour and welcome frivolity. Perhaps I had a desire just
to drift for once, not to struggle. It was pleasant to imagine that all would
turn out well, and after fifteen months' risking my life at the Front,
marriage seemed a comparatively small risk to take. I did want someone to take
some of the burden off my shoulders and thought how good it would be for
Kenneth to have a father. After a lightning honeymoon we hardly saw one
another again. I was too busy at Pervyse, and my husband had to return to his
squadron".[3]
Knocker and Chisholm were engaged in multiple battlefield rescues, even
carrying fallen men on their backs to their first-aid station. After she and
Chisholm rescued a wounded German pilot in No
Man's Land both women were awarded the British Military
Medal, and were made Officers of the Most
Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem.[8][11] Fellow
corps volunteer May Sinclair said of Knocker: "She had an irresistible
inclination towards the greatest possible danger."[12]
As word spread of their deeds they began to receive visits from journalists,
photographers and VIP's,
becoming among the most photographed women of the war. Both women were gassed during
the German offensive in March 1918 and had to return home.[4] Both
saw out the rest of the war in Britain as members of the newly formed Royal
Air Force; the Women's
Royal Air Force.
By 1919, Knocker's marriage to the Baron had unraveled when both he and the
Roman Catholic Church discovered the truth about her previous marriage. For
Chisholm, this deception ended their friendship. The two barely spoke again.
As part of the settlement Knocker was allowed to remain a Baroness in name
only.[4]
In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, the Baroness joined the Women's
Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as an Aircraftwoman 2nd class, becoming an
officer in February 1940.[13] Working
with RAF Fighter
Command,[14] she
rose to the rank of Squadron
Officer in March 1942,[15] and
was twice Mentioned
in Despatches.[16]
Tragedy struck on 3 July 1942 with the death of her son, Wing
Commander Kenneth Duke Knocker, who was killed when his plane was shot
down over Groningen.[17][18] She
left the RAF in October 1942[19] following
her son's death and because she needed to look after her elderly
foster-father.[20]
After the Second World War the Baroness participated in raising funds for
the RAF Association and
the Benevolent Fund.[21] She
lived in the Earl Haig
Homes in Park Lane, Ashtead, Surrey from
approximately 1926 until her death. Later in life she began breeding Chihuahuas and
was always accompanied by three or four of them. She was greatly concerned
about the welfare of both animals and the conservation of Ashtead
Common where she could often be seen walking her pets, "flamboyantly
dressed with large earrings and a voluminous dark cloak".[22] On
26 April 1978 the Baroness died aged 93 of pneumonia and senile
dementia.[4] She
had never married again.
In November 2014 a statue of Knocker and Mairi Chisholm was unveiled in the
garden of the Hotel Ariane in Ypres, Belgium.[28] In
November 2017 Knocker was recognised with a blue
plaque on the house where she was born in Exeter.[29]
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