Stobart Hospital – Kragujevac 1915

The exhibition “Stobart Hospital – Kragujevac 1915”, by Tatjana Janković, senior librarian of the National Library “Vuk Karadžić” from Kragujevac, with a review by Dejan Ristić, through photographs and documents, with hitherto untranslated testimonies of staff, provides insight into one of the most important missions from period of the Great War on the territory of Serbia. In the period from April to November 1915, an organized group of 45 members of the medical staff and volunteers, led by Mrs. Mabel Sinclair Stobart, arrived in Kragujevac as the Third Unit of the Serbian Support Fund. The journey of the members of this mission from London to Kragujevac lasted almost a month. Having in mind the typhus epidemic, Mabel Stobart prepared to work in the hospital under tents. After arriving in Kragujevac, with the help of the Serbian military command, the location on the city racetrack was chosen – in the settlement of Vašarište, and 62 tents were set up, which the Unit delivered with it. The original goal of the Mission was to provide medical assistance to soldiers suffering from typhus, but, with the consent of the Serbian military ambulance, the mission shifted to treating the wounded and the health-neglected civilian population. In a short time, seven dispensaries were opened (Kragujevac, Lapovo, Natalinci, Rekovac, Rudnik, Vitanovac and Ovčar Banja). For six months, 20,000 patients passed through Stobart Hospital. Part of the staff is affected by typhus; volunteer Mabel Dirmer and sister Lorna Ferris died of typhus and were buried in the City Cemetery in Kragujevac, along with Dr. Elizabeth Ross. In October 1915, part of the staff of Stobart Hospital set out to withdraw with the Serbian army. The brave British Mabel Sinclair Stobart is entrusted by the Serbian command to lead one column; they arrive at their destination without any loss of humanity. Mabel Stobart herself left the most detailed and extensive testimony about the work of the Stobart Hospital in a book published as early as 1916, entitled The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere (in Serbian, published by Prometheus and RTS, 2016). This testimony was openly engaged to provide the British with the most accurate insight into the war situation in Serbia and to encourage further assistance to the Serbian people. During 1915 and 1916, three other important books by members of the Stobart mission were published in London: My Diary in Serbia by Monica Stanley, Letters from Stobart Hospital by Mabel Dirmer and Withdrawal from Serbia by Olive Aldridge. These three testimonies appear for the first time in translation into Serbian within the book Hospital Stobart (National Library “Vuk Karadžić” Kragujevac, 2018), and their selected segments form the textual part of the exhibition.