A Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse

I would like to think that this photo is of Ethel Styles, a Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D) nurse that I’ve been researching for several months. The postcard isn’t named however it came from the same individual from whom I purchased several autograph books and other ephemera that once belonged to Nurse Styles. The only clue on the back of the postcard is the name of the photographer: James Carter, Burton’s Buildings, Fishergate, Preston.

Ethel Styles was born in 1887 in Acton on the western edge of London and worked as a VAD in institutions ranging from Bedfordshire in the north to St. Leonards-on-Sea in the south. Much of her time was spent on wards at Bethnal Green Military Hospital and Holburn Military Hospital. I’m still researching Ethel’s life after the war but I know she married and settled in the London area. She had one daughter, Edwina B. McConnell, but was widowed in 1934 when her husband Edwin Lewis McConnell died. In later years she moved to Liverpool where she passed away in 1976. Although she had a connection to the north of England in later life I have no evidence that would place her in Preston as a young VAD.

Any information you may have on Ethel Styles or the nurse in this photograph would be most appreciated.