Fanny Hines


Frances Emma "Fanny" Hines was a nurse from Victoria, Australia, who served in the Second Boer War. She was the first Australian woman to die on active service.

Early life

Frances Emma Hines was born on 26 August 1864 in Apsley, Victoria, the fourth daughter of Francis Patrick Hines and his wife Eleanor Mary Caroline. She attended the Fairlight Private Girls School in East St Kilda and then trained as a nurse at the Melbourne Hospital for Sick Children.

Military service

In March 1900, Sister Hines was one of ten trained nurses who travelled on the Euryalus to South Africa with the Victorian Citizen Bushmen.
Hines was nursing at Enkeldoorn with sole responsibility for 26 patients, which damaged her own health. She died on 7 August 1900 from pneumonia aggravated by malnutrition in an army hospital in Bulawayo, Rhodesia. She was buried with full military honours in Bulawayo. A marble cross was placed on her grave, funded by her fellow nurses and Victorian Citizen Bushmen. On 27 September 1901, a tablet to her memory was unveiled by Major-General Downes at Fairlight School, erected through subscriptions of her former classmates.