Susannah Armstrong was not afraid of challenges. Her life was full of life-changing decisions that propelled her in various directions. Sometimes good and sometimes bad or sad. With that said, some things in her life offer up some mysteries.
I cannot find a birth certificate or baptism for Susannah, so we cannot be certain of her birth year. The first record I can find is as a free passenger arriving in Brisbane, Queensland, on the Waroonga on 17 October 1887. Susannah is listed as aged twenty-five and a domestic servant.[1] The ship’s arrival date gives Susannah a birth year of around 1862, but both her age and occupation were desirable for the government, so that they may have been a little bit of fiction.
There are no known records of Susannah in Queensland before she enrolled for nursing training at the Brisbane General Hospital. In their book, Bearers of Tradition, Helen Gregory and Cecilia Brazil state that Susannah was thirty-two when she commenced training, a few months before the hospital enforced minimum and maximum ages for women aged between nineteen and twenty-two to enter nursing training.[2] Susannah trained between April 1892 and June 1894.[3] This fits the reputed birth date given by Gregory and Brazil, of 17 September 1860. We have now identified two possible birth years for Susanna – 1860 and 1862 – and both are before birth registration commenced in Ireland in 1864. I am sure more birth years will be found, with her birth year being manipulated to suit her life.
Susannah and fellow graduate Miriam Plover were friends, and both moved to Western Australia and subsequently volunteered for the Boer War with a group of Western Australian nurses funded by private donors. Both women served in hospitals at Ladysmith and Howick and returned to Western Australia.[4] The Boer War was the first time Australian women were allowed to nurse in military establishments during war, but the nurses went as colonials, not Australians, as the country did not federate until 1901.
On return from service, Susannah took the monumental step of marrying. On the twenty-ninth of January 1902, Susannah married Mayhall Daven, who was from the United States. Susanna gives her age as thirty-three. Her parents are listed with her father, James Armstrong, a farmer, and her mother, Eliza Hannan. If Susannah was thirty-three as she claimed, her birth year would have been 1867 or 1868. She possibly manipulated her age to match her future husband, as Mayhall gave the same age.[5]
I have found no immigration or birth records for Mayhall, but he described himself as a farmer. The newlywed couple lived at 5 Lacey Street, Perth, around 1903, with Mayhall now listed as a contractor.[6] The couple had a daughter, Eileen Alexander Davern, who died on 16 April 1903, aged nine months. The death, due to meningitis, occurred at Lacey Street.[7] Eileen’s death would have shattered her parents.
Now grieving for their daughter, Mayhall became a regular in the newspapers, charged with false pretences. The charges were numerous, and he served time in jail.[8] Whether this was a result of grief or a continuation of previous behaviour before knowing Susannah is not known. However, Susannah was legally separated from her husband in 1906.[9]
Around 1913, Susannah was recorded as living at St Helen’s Hospital, Perth where she was matron.[10] In 1910, Mayhall was living in Wellington Street, Perth and was a contractor.[11] Later that year, Mayhall was sentenced to four months’ hard labour on false pretences, with the judge hoping a custodial sentence would change him, but doubted it would be effective.[12] However, in 1913, Mayhall died, and his funeral notice mentioned his ‘beloved wife’ Nurse Armstrong of St Helen’s Hospital.[13] Susannah perhaps had some residual feeling for her late husband, or she was following accepted moves.
Now a widow and using the Armstrong name, Susannah enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service on 22 July 1915. She was about to embark on war service for the second time. She gave her age as forty-six, which equated to a birth year of 1868 or 1869.[14] However, if her birth year was early, i.e., 1860 or 1862, she would have been around fifty-five or fifty-three when she went to war for the second time.
Susannah’s second war was short. She was discharged on 8 August 1916, so her active service was slightly over one year. Initially, she served on hospital transport duty on the HMAT Aeneas and returned to Australia from Suez. On her return to Suez, she was posted to the First Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Alexandria. She then embarked on the SS Marathon, and returned to the First Military District, Queensland, and spent a little time in the Second Military District in NSW before returning to the Fifth Military District in Perth. During these times, she was a sister in the Home Service, and she never returned to active service. It appears that by 1917, Susannah was very unwell and suffering from giddiness, pain in her chest, breathlessness, palpitations, and high blood pressure as discovered by the Repatriation Department’s medical officers. Susannah was given a pension of two pounds and two shillings per fortnight, which was fifty percent of the applicable rate for nurses who were pensioned. This commenced in August 1917 and continued at various rates but was generally maintained at around fifty percent until her death.
Susannah’s condition was considered constitutional with aggravation through service. The Repatriation Department allowed her cardiac dilation and arteriosclerosis, accelerated by service, as conditions due to war service.[15]
In 1937, Susannah visited the United Kingdom and Ireland for six months. This was Susannah’s first return to her home county, Wicklow, which she had left fifty years before. She must have felt her health would stand the long trip. A highlight was Susannah attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace and meeting Queen Mary. Susannah also had some broadcasting commitments, probably because of her nursing in two wars.[16]
Susannah Armstrong Davern died of cardiac failure, auricular fibrillation and influenza on 2 August 1939.[17] She was buried in the Karrakatta Cemetery, although there is no headstone. Many Australian newspapers reported Susannah’s death and stated that she was seventy-nine years old, which perhaps resolved the question of her birth year, i.e., 1860.[18] Further confirmation is given by her niece/grand-niece, who, in writing to the Repatriation Department about Susannah, stated her birth year as 1860, although the zero was over-typed.
Susannah had one final surprise as she left almost £10,000 to the Swan Boy’s Orphanage for education purposes. She was a generous patron and could perhaps do this as she had no descendants.[19]
Susannah was a brave, independent woman who nursed in two wars, travelling first to the Boer War and then to the First World War. Earlier, she had emigrated from Ireland to Queensland and then moved to Western Australia after completing her nursing training. Nursing was one of the few acceptable professions for women at that time. Susannah even returned to the United Kingdom and Ireland, suggesting she embraced travel. Susannah had a disappointing marriage and suffered the death of her only child, but she was resilient, embracing opportunity in life and usually succeeding.
[1] Queensland State Archives, ‘Shipping list for Waroonga’, DR35994, accessed 11 March 2026.
[2] Helen Gregory and Cecilia Brazil, Bearers of the tradition: nurses of the Royal Brisbane Hospital 1888-1993, Bowen Hills, Qld, Boolarong and the RBH Graduate Nurses Association, 1993, p. 5.
[3] Australasian Trained Nurses Association (ATNA): Register of Members 1913, Sydney, p 376.
[4] Bearers of Tradition, p. 5.
[5] Marriage Certificate, Mayhall Davern and Susannah Armstrong, married 29 January 1902, Western Australia, No. 978, Government of Western Australia.
[6] ‘Electors who voted at Beauford Street’, 1903 Australian Electoral Roll, Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), p. 9, accessed from Ancestry.com, 14 March 2026.
[7] ‘Death notices’ West Australian, 18 April 1903, p. 6.
[8] ‘A dynamite explosion’, Daily News, Perth, 23 July 1904, p. 8; ‘News and Notes: False pretences’, West Australian, Perth, 3 September 1908, p. 4; ‘The sentence’, Daily News, Perth, 13 December 1910, p. 6.
[9] National Archives of Australia (NAA), Davern (AKA) Armstrong, Susannah, series K60, C28691, 10073795, accessed 13 March 2026.
[10] ATNA Register of Members 1913, p 376.
[11] ‘Division of Perth’, 1910 Australian Electoral Roll, AEC, p. 3, accessed from Ancestry.com.au, 14 March 2026.
[12] ‘The sentence’, Daily News, Perth, 13 December 1910, p. 6.
[13] ‘Deaths’, Western Mail, Perth, 11 April 1910, p. 35.
[14] NAA, Susanah Armstrong, series B2455, 3035748, accessed 13 March 2026.
[15] NAA, Davern (AKA) Armstrong, Susannah, series K60, C28691, 10073795.
[16] ‘Noticed by the Queen’, West Australian, Perth, 13 October 1937, p. 5.
[17] NAA, Davern (AKA) Armstrong, Susannah, series K60, C28691, 10073795.
[18] ‘Obituaries from all states’, Australasian, Melbourne, p. 30; ‘Bequest to Orphans, Daily News, Perth, October 1939, p. 6; Western Mail, Perth, 17 August 1939, p 2; ‘The late Mrs. S. Davern’, West Australian, 5 August 1939, p. 9.
[19] ‘Bequest to Orphans’, Daily News, Perth, `October 1939, p. 6.
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