Discover the story behind some of the objects and archives
in our collection

Adèle Haarseth’s Story

In a change to the normal object in focus, we’re taking a closer look at the life of Adèle Haarseth, née Pallot. Through the written archives we’ve been able to build up this picture of Adele’s life…

Adèle started life as a privileged daughter from a large, rich, family in St Saviour, but her life was far from the predictable life of respectable gentility that one might expect. We know about her life through her family papers, which have recently been transferred to Jersey Archive from the University of Alberta, Canada.

Adeline Annie Pallot, as she was christened, was born on 7 March 1873, the eldest surviving child of Charles Pallot and Mary Anne (Annie) Giffard. She had three brothers and two sisters, all born into a wealthy family living at a grand house called ‘Beau Désert’ in St Saviour. Adèle – as she was always known within the family – was well-educated, going to school in France and travelling around Europe (as did her sisters). In 1891, presumably soon after finishing her own education, she was working in St Helier as a governess. But she decided to go into nursing as a career and trained at the Royal Hants County Hospital in Winchester.

Portrait of Adèle in her formal nursing uniform.

She served as a military nurse in the Army Nursing Service Reserve during the Anglo-Boer War, serving at the No 5 Stationary Hospital, Bloemfontein, South Africa. She received two campaign medals for this work, the South Africa Medal and the King’s South Africa Medal. In 1903 she qualified as a midwife, and in 1904 was working as one at the Government Hospital, Lokoja, Nigeria.

Adèle was still in Nigeria when the First World War broke out. Within days, she was deployed to the field as part of the Princess Christian Army Nursing Service Reserve. She was sent to Nyasaland (now Malawi), which was then a British Protectorate, to serve in the East African Campaign. This campaign involved troops from across the British Empire, who were sent to aid the King’s African Rifles, mostly fighting in German East Africa. The campaign absolutely devastated the area, causing enormous numbers of civilian deaths through famine, as well as the deaths of about 95,000 local men who had been conscripted to work as porters.

Colonial Nursing Association Medal 1903-1920.

When Adèle arrived in Nyasaland as a 41-year-old professional nurse in September 1914, she was not to know any of this. She was sent to set up a field hospital, and in a letter written on 25, September 1914 she vividly describes her first experiences of the war there. She recounts leaving Fort Johnstone, Mangochi, Malawi and sailing up Lake Malawi “in a boat swarming with cockroaches” to Karonga, where she and her fellow nurse (and their servants) were taken to a “dirty, empty house” which they were to turn into a hospital.

They worked for two days, cleaning and setting up beds, but then had to evacuate to a place further away from the conflict, and had to start setting up all over again in another location. They had a ‘boma’ – a kind of fortified enclosure – for safety, and a few days later they had to take shelter there from a German military assault. “For the next three and a half hours a perfect hailstorm of bullets” followed, and the women spent the time “crouching at the foot of a brick wall”, the top level of which began to disintegrate under the gunfire. One man from her party was shot dead. Adèle said, “The noise was deafening, I don’t think I shall ever forget the sound of a Maxim gun if I live to be a hundred.” The hard work of nursing the wounded began, and for the following ten days she and her colleagues were rushed off their feet, scarcely having time to sleep. She assisted in the trephining of a German soldier and the tracheotomy of another. They were then evacuated to another, more fortified hospital, where – she says – they were left “with only the Red Cross flag” to guard them.

Extract from a letter from Adèle to her mother Annie, transcribed by Annie, describing Adèle’s experience of being caught in the middle of gunfire in August 1914

Adèle was mentioned in Despatches for her “assiduity in the care of wounded in hospital after Karonga was attacked on Sept 9^th 1914” and was mentioned in Despatches again in 1919, for “gallant and distinguished services in the Field” in 1917. She was awarded the three First World War service medals, to add to the two she had already earned: the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

Certificate commemorating Adèle being Mentioned in Dispatches for nursing in September 1914, awarded on 1 November 1915, signed by Winston Churchill as Secretary of State for War, March 1919.

Adèle loved living in Africa. In 1937, then living in Jersey, she reminisced in a letter about the scenery in Africa – “so beautiful that it absolutely squeezes one’s heart” – and in another letter talks about being able to read by moonlight there. Adèle’s relationship with Nyasaland blossomed for another reason, too: it was there that she met her husband, Martin. Martin Haarseth was Norwegian, but in 1894 (aged 30) he emigrated to Cape Town, intending to work as a ‘clerk’. In April 1915, aged 51, he enrolled in the 1^st Battalion, King’s African Rifles, in the Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve, serving as a Quarter Master and Lieutenant. It would be a fair to assume that Adèle and Martin met during their time in military service. In July 1918 Adèle was in Jersey, after a spell in St Helena, but she returned to Nyasaland in March 1919, and by the early 1920s she was married and living on the Mafinjo tobacco-growing estate, Cholo District, Nyasaland. Meeting so late in life, Adèle and Martin had less than ten years of marriage before Martin died in 1927.

Adèle may have been called back to Jersey to care for her ageing mother, as she returned in May 1925; her mother Annie died in May 1926. By then, Adèle’s three brothers had all emigrated to Alberta, Canada, leaving their widowed mother and sisters behind. Adèle seems to have returned to Jersey permanently in 1926 or 1927, living quietly in a cottage at Gorey and looking after her sisters and friends. She despaired when war broke out again, commenting in a letter to one of her Canadian nieces in 1939 that, “Science, instead of being used for making weapons of man and fireworks, should be used in the making of a better world, better conditions, a place in the sun for everybody.”

Much of what we know about Adèle’s life comes from the letters which she wrote to her Canadian relations. Her next letter comes after Liberation where she worries then about how Europe will be fed now that war is over, but delights in the ever-improving conditions in post-war Jersey: “Every week sees some fresh blessing arrive, last week it was ½ a pound of chocolate for each of us, the week before 21 tons of fish arrived in the Island” and writing, “Some of us, from miserable skeletons, are getting so fat that it is laughable.” The Christmas parcel sent from Canada in 1945 sent her into raptures of delight; it included bloater paste, tea, cough drops, a cookie and hot chocolate. By then, she was unwell, suffering from heart trouble.

In early 1946 she moved in with her youngest sister, Lucie, at The Cottage, Le Hocq, their other sister having died in 1944. Adèle died on 6 March 1946, the day before her 73^rd birthday, after a life divided between the small Island of Jersey and the enormous vistas of Africa.