A former nurse who celebrated her 100th birthday just before Christmas and who still keeps in touch with a school friend has reflected on her fascinating life.


Lucy Beaver Thomas, who lives in Lydlinch, was surprised by The Stalbridge Singers, who sang her favourite songs in her daughter’s garden on her special day – Lucy has often attended Stalbridge Singers choir practice with her daughter. Her grandchildren also bought her a tree, which Lucy planted, and her neighbours decorated her lane with bunting, balloons and banners while she was out.

Lucy was the youngest of five children of two missionaries. She was born in Lahore, then in the Punjab, India, now the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
When she was 18 months old her mother took the children to England on a P&O ship. She remembers sailing through the Suez Canal and her excitement at seeing camels.

Lucy with her siblings

In England they spent time with family before leaving Lucy’s elder sisters and brother at boarding school.  She and her brother David returned to India, where Lucy remained until she was seven. She has fond memories of sleeping on the flat roof of their bungalow and being taken up to a hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas when the weather was too hot. Her father had to remain behind and he wrote rhymes and drew pictures for each day until they could be together again.

When she joined her siblings at boarding school aged seven she was most surprised to find stairs on the inside of houses. She has known her friend Heather since she was two. The pair were at boarding school together and are amazingly still in touch.

Lucy’s family

When she was 12 her parents returned to England and her father was minister of the parish in Haddlesey, Yorkshire. The children had a wonderful time there during the school holidays. At 18, Lucy began her nurse’s training in Bournemouth but left after six months and went to Blandford Cottage Hospital. The war had just started and her brothers joined up.

Her eldest brother was killed in North Africa and the younger brother interned in a PoW camp. Blandford Camp was bombed and two German planes shot down by Spitfires, the casualties sent to Blandford Hospital.
Lucy became an SRN and went on to do midwifery at the West Middlesex hospital in Isleworth.
V2 rockets were dropping on London, demolishing whole streets at a time.
One fell on a factory near the hospital and blew in the labour ward window where Lucy was with a mother about to have her baby.
The baby arrived in double quick time and Lucy stayed on duty that night to help with all the casualties from the bombing.

Lucy returned to Blandford Cottage hospital as a staff nurse and it was at a farewell party for the airmen at Tarrant Rushton to which Lucy was sent to look after the younger nurses that she met her husband. She spent the evening drinking gin and orange, sitting on Bill’s lap. They married in 1949 and had two daughters.

When the girls started school Lucy continued working part time in the caring profession. Bill died in 1991 soon after he retired from the bank.

Lucy said: “The war brought us all together but the pandemic is keeping us all apart.”

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