GROWING up on the family property Rosewood at Emerald Hill, Annie Egan could never have imagined the furore that would erupt across Australia 100 years ago as she died alone in the North Head Quarantine Station – refused the last rites of her Catholic faith.
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A former student at St Mary’s College, Annie Egan began her nursing training at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney in May 1915. Not long after her graduation in 1918, she courageously volunteered to nurse at the North Head Quarantine Station, where many of the patients were returning soldiers suffering from the Spanish Flu which had been sweeping Europe.
Nurse Egan had been on leave at Rosewood when she received the call and travelled to Sydney by train with a local man who had contracted pneumonic flu. Although she had been inoculated, Nurse Egan fell ill a day or two after arriving but continued to care for patients for another three days before collapsing. A devout Catholic and fearing the worst, Annie Egan asked for a priest to administer the last sacraments to her – but the authorities refused.
The response from the medical officer at Customs House, Dr J. Elkington, was a blanket refusal to all Christian faiths to attend to their dying faithful.
A report in the Catholic Press of December 5, 1918, described the death of Miss Egan in the quarantine area, “under such heartless and cruel circumstances”.
Although efforts we were made to find a military chaplain, Dr Elkington stood firm citing instructions from the minister, Massey Greene.
By this stage the public outcry had reached a crescendo and Nurse Egan died at the quarantine station on Tuesday, December 3, 1918. She was buried the following day “with full military honours”.
A report in the Catholic Press of December 5, 1918, described the death of Miss Egan in the quarantine area, “under such heartless and cruel circumstances”.
“She was a devout, practical Catholic. Realising she was dying, for days and nights she did not cease to implore the rites of the church. Whilst the authorities blundered, blustered and bluffed, this girl, who, for conscience sake, was offering her young life to help to secure health to the community and to her fellow-citizens, was callously permitted to pass hence without the consolations of religion and the rites of her church. She died on Tuesday, and was buried on Wednesday of this week.”
The article continued: “There is the expression of very widespread indignation, for the deceased nurse was evidently a great favourite at St Vincent's, and with all with whom she came in contact. By request of her nursing mates, a special Requiem Mass will be celebrated in St. Vincent's Hospital Chapel on Saturday morning, in suffrage of the soul of this devout, self-sacrificing, but spiritually outraged young heroine — R.I.P.”
Four days after Annie Egan’s death, Archbishop Kelly and the administrator of St Mary’s Cathedral, Fr O’Gorman, accompanied by three other priests drove to the quarantine station asking for permission to tend to other dying patients - they were all refused entry.
Thousands of letters of protest and assertions by two prominent physicians that there was no justification for refusing access to those dying from the flu, eventually led to a change of policy by the Federal Government – too late for Nurse Annie Egan, who lies in a lonely grave overlooking the ocean at North Head.