On boxing day 1916, in the middle of war in Europe, 42 year-old Miss Brotherton and her niece, Miss Cherry, boarded the RMS Mooltan, purportedly to visit relatives in England.

Despite awful weather and news of nine British boats sunk on the day of their arrival, Miss Brotherton’s cousin in St. Ives, artist Frances Hodgkins, received news – brief and to the point – of their safe arrival. The bohemian artist, quite the opposite of Miss Brotherton, said of her cousin’s wartime journey, ‘I would admire her spirit and courage more if she were more human and real.’

On 11 April 1917, Miss Brotherton’s nephew (Miss Cherry’s brother) Lance Corporal H. B. Cherry was officially reported missing. Already acquainted with Vera Deakin – her mother and Vera’s Aunt Catherine were old friends – Miss Brotherton was soon brought into the fold of the Enquiry Bureau headquarters in London. We don’t know about her motivations for joining the bureau but it is intriguing to speculate. Did she go looking for news of her nephew, for instance? Was this the purpose of travelling to London with Miss Cherry from the outset?

Once joining the Bureau, Miss Brotherton soon became invaluable.

As with all of the volunteers in responsible roles, Miss Brotherton worked long hours. She was designated to the records department at A.I.F headquarters – exchanging information about wounded and missing soldiers.

Pictured here is a letter from Vera Deakin to Lady Miller, the Assistant Commissioner of the Australian Red Cross Society in July 1918 asking for an extra worker to help Miss Brotherton and Miss Alston at the London A.I.F. Headquarters. Describing the role, Vera Deakin writes, ‘This is a difficult position and must be filled by a woman over thirty, of experience and discretion…a dignified representative of the Society.’

Londoners in the First World War were not immune from danger.

In the evenings Miss Brotherton worked at the Enquiry Bureau headquarters at Grosvenor Place. In a fascinating letter to a friend dated 25 September 1917, Miss Brotherton described an evening when Miss Johnson and Miss Whybrow, who had just left the office at 8pm, came running in, ‘panting from three flights of stairs’, to say there was an air raid and warning her to go at once. As people flocked into the tube stations, Miss Brotherton made her way to her boarding house, by tram and on foot, under the lights of planes overhead and the sound of gun flares and shrapnel bursts. ‘Was I scared?’ she wrote, ‘Yes, and proud…’ Presumably her pride rested in having been there, contributing to the war effort through her Red Cross work.

Pictured here is the aftermath of an air raid in central London which occurred on 7 July 1917, not long before Miss Brotherton’s air raid experience. It shows a view of the roof of the General Post Office, looking across to St Paul's Cathedral in the background, with piles of salvaged materials and debris. St Paul’s Cathedral is about 4km northeast of Grosvenor Place.

Pictured here are clerks at work in 1918 at one of the Grosvenor Place Tracing rooms.

On 7 May 1917, Miss Brotherton learned that her nephew was a prisoner of war at Dulmen. He was later transferred to Paderborn and in August 1918, sent a postcard ‘Am still O.K.’ A further postcard to Miss Brotherton in December 1918 confirmed that he had arrived in Hull, England. In the same month, with the war over and her nephew safe and well, Miss Brotherton returned to her home of Castlemaine, Victoria.

She remained a well-respected member of the community, contributing to the social and cultural life of Castlemaine until her death aged 82 in 1956.