Quarantine Station, Manly: Nurse Annie Egan dies of Spanish flu in 1918
Annie Egan realised her dream to become a nurse but the Gunnedah local lost her life to the Spanish flu while treating WWI soldiers at Quarantine Station at Manly in 1918.
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For years flowers, candles and photographs appeared on the gravesite of nurse Annie Egan, buried near the Quarantine Station at Manly in 1918. But nobody knew who it was as Egan’s descendants did not live in Sydney.
Local newspaper articles appealed to the public for information on who was caring for the grave of the young nurse who died of the Spanish flu while tending to infected World War 1 soldiers.
“My sister took me on a tour of the Quarantine Station 17 years ago when I came to Sydney from the Czech Republic and I fell in love with the place,” says northern beaches local Erika Slaby, who can now be revealed for the first time as the gravesite attendant.
“I read about Annie and her story really touched me, probably because I always wanted to be a nurse.
“I was struck by her age, what she did and how she died. I go there all the time and on occasions like her birthday and the anniversary of her death, I replace the flowers, tidy it up and replace the photo I put of her if it’s faded.
“When I first found Annie’s grave back in 2015, it was overgrown and covered in weed and grass. A tour guide at the Quarantine Station got in touch with a great-great nephew of Annie’s, to ask if the family minded that I was looking after her grave and the answer was that they love to know that she is being remembered.
“So I will continue.”
Annie Egan was born in Gunnedah on August 22, 1891, the fifth of nine children to farmer William Egan and Ellen Burns.
Egan trained as a nurse at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and at St Vincent’s Hospital and passed her final exams in June 1918. She enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service but she never made it overseas.
Instead, Egan volunteered to go to the Quarantine Station which was in the midst of the Spanish influenza epidemic.
She arrived at the Station on November 21, 1918 and immediately began treating Australian soldiers suffering from the influenza.
Just five days after she arrived she was herself admitted to the Quarantine Hospital, suffering from the same symptoms she had been treating in others.
She died on December 3, 1918, aged 27, just six months after becoming a registered nurse.
Slaby isn’t the only one who wants to keep the legacy of Annie Egan alive.
Allan Miles is a former soldier and chief executive of Operation Pilgrimage Group who are in the process of finalising two memorials in Egan’s name: one will be a memorial rock erected in Egan’s hometown of Gunnedah and the other a memorial plaque inside the Quarantine Station hospital ward where Egan worked.
“I want to make sure Annie is recognised, she deserves that,” Miles says.
“She is remembered today mainly because of the fact she was denied last rites by the government but if not for that, I think she would be all but forgotten today and that’s not right. I want the Annie Egan Memorial to represent all Australian Army nurses.”
Egan’s story has been unearthed after COVID-19 drew out eerie similarities to the Spanish flu pandemic.
Before that, Egan was mostly only known to those who attended the ghost tours at the Quarantine Station.
Author Michelle Montebello, who has written one of the only fictional accounts of life at the Station, used information she discovered about Egan’s life in her 2019 novel, The Quarantine Station.
“My fictional character, Rose, comes to work in the ‘unhealthy grounds’ at the station and comes into contact with influenza patients,” Montebello says.
“There’s a part in the book where Rose tells the matron she has been inoculated but the matron tells her the inoculation is not foolproof, you can still die from the flu.
“This was taken from information I found about Annie through my research at the Station.”
Got a local history story to share? Email mercedes.maguire@news.com.au
OPERATION PILGRIMAGE
The Operation Pilgrimage Group, made up of former members of the Australian Defence Forces, are committed to honouring Australia’s explorers, pioneers and military exploits.
The group are responsible for 34 projects so far including nine memorials, their latest endeavour to have the whole of the Australian Nursing Corps recognised through the Annie Egan Memorial.
Their work includes the 2015 memorial to the five men lost in the 1963 HMAS Sydney whaler boat tragedy while on a training exercise in the Whitsundays. The bodies of three of these young men were never found.
A stone and anchor memorial commemorates them in Cannonvale, QLD.
QUARANTINE STATION
The Quarantine Station operated from 1832 until 1984 on Manly’s North Head as a place for migrant ships who were suspected of carrying contagious diseases to offload passengers before entering Sydney Harbour.
Over the 150-odd year history there, ships were quarantined that contained cholera, measles, scarlet fever, typhus fever, smallpox and Spanish Influenza.
All up, more than 13,000 people were quarantined there, of which 572 died and were buried there.
Today, many of the historic houses have been transformed into 4.5-star accommodation and together with a fine dining restaurant, the Boilerhouse Restaurant and Bar, attracts a new wave of visitors.
HAWKESBURY TRAGEDY: 9 DROWNED IN FREAK CAPSIZE
There is no doubt Rachel Kalenstein felt apprehensive the morning she set off with a group of family and friends for a day on the Hawkesbury River.
It was Sunday October 18, 1936, and the group of 11 – which included Rachel’s brothers Woolfe and Henry, her sister-in-law Clara and her little two-year-old nephew Jack (Jacob) – were in high spirits.
Her brother Henry had recently become engaged to Sarah Klarnett and no doubt the day involved excited chatter about the wedding due to take place in two months at the Great Synagogue in the Sydney CBD.
A neighbour of Rachel’s would later tell reporters the young woman had changed her frock and hat at the last minute that morning because she felt “something will happen to them”.
Before the end of the day, the group – which also included siblings Eric and David Isenberg, their sister Rachel Penn who was pregnant with her first child, her husband Cecil Penn and Eric’s friend Minnie Franks – would fail to return from their trip to the Central Coast.
All but one, Jack’s father Woolfe, would drown in a boating accident on the river.
The tragic event – which newspapers of the day reported with headlines such as “Tragic end to Sunday outing” – has all but been forgotten today, the row of nine graves side-by-side at Rookwood Cemetery falling into disrepair.
But for Dani Haskis, who is descended from the Isenbergs who perished, the sad tale will never be forgotten.
“When I learned about this, I really felt the tragedy of it because of my own experience,” said Haski, who also lost her 10-year-old brother in a car accident many years ago.
“One of the things I want to do is remember these people as people, not as just an event that took place in the past. This event did have a generational effect. In any community, that kind of loss will resonate for a long time.”
The group of 11 spent the day at the home of Mrs Marion Jones at Patonga where they had lunch. They set off for home about 6pm on an 18-foot launch that would take them to the Hawkesbury River train station and home to Sydney.
The group of 11 were joined on the boat by Mrs Ella Neilson, a friend of Mrs Jones, the boat captain Clifton Jones, who was Mrs Jones’ son, and his nephew Norman Jones. Of the 14 people who boarded the boat, only two survived – Woolfe and Norman.
The group had no indication of the weather pattern that would rise up suddenly once they were on the water.
Ben Smith explains the situation in his 1990 book, Patonga And Some Of Its People.
“A nor-wester … flattens out the ocean swell and because it’s shielded from the hills above Patonga and Juno Point, gives the northern shore an almost placid, lake-like appearance, while the side stretches of the river would be boiling.”
This explains the comments made by Norman Jones after he and Woolfe were found injured and in shock huddled on the rocks the morning after the accident.
“A windy squall struck the launch and in a flash it was all over,” he told a newspaper.
“The launch went over so quickly that I don’t think anybody moved, it was as if a giant hand had picked up the launch and capsized it.”
The bodies of the five women were found the day after the accident but the bodies of baby Jack, David and Eric Isenberg and Cecil Penn were not found for three days.
A newspaper article describes how Jack’s little body was discovered wedged between rocks on the day his father Woolfe buried his wife, sister and brother.
The event was a devastating blow to the small Jewish community of Sydney who lost members from the Central Synagogue in Bondi Junction and Newtown Synagogue.
Woolfe died just three years later in a car accident near Newcastle.
Got a local history story to share? Email mercedes.maguire@news.com.au
THE TRAGEDY OF MRS JONES
While it’s easy to focus on the families who lost so many members in one foul swoop that day in 1936 — Woolfe Kalenstein alone lost his baby son, wife, brother and sister — the sad story of Marion Jones is often overlooked.
She had celebrated her 75th birthday shortly before the accident, which would take her son and launch captain Clifton Jones.
But Clifton was the eighth of 12 children she would bury: three died at birth, another son died at the age of four, another in 1917 on the Belgian battlefront, a 38-year-old daughter would die in 1920 and a 41-year-old son in 1925.
WAR OVER THE HAWKESBURY
Long before the Hawkesbury River was named in honour of British statesman Lord Hawkesbury by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1789, it was the home to the Indigenous people of the Wannungine and Darkinyung tribes.
It was also inhabited by the Eora and Guringai people, all of whom used the Hawkesbury River as an important source of food and transport.
From 1794 to 1816, The Hawkesbury River was the scene of skirmishes known as the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars, a result of British attempts to construct farms along the banks of the river.
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