Born: 19 February 1851, Ireland
Died: 19 August 1934
Country most active: United Kingdom, Ireland, India
Also known as: Elizabeth Anne Sandes
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Deirdre Bryan. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Sandes, Elizabeth Anne (‘Elise’) (1851–1934), founder of Sandes Soldiers’ Homes in Ireland, India, and Great Britain, was born 19 February 1851 in Tralee, Co. Kerry, third daughter among seven daughters and two sons of Stephen Sandes, British army officer, of Sallow Glen, Co. Kerry, and Mary Anne Sandes (née Ponsonby), of Crotta, Co. Kerry. Due to childhood ill health, she received no formal education and lived mainly with an aunt in the countryside until ten years of age. At the age of 13, she attended Mme de Mailly’s French School, Bray, Co. Wicklow.
Soon after her return to the family home, Oak Villa, in Tralee, in 1861, she attended a revival meeting. It was then, she claimed, that her religious fervour began. When in Bray, she formed a friendship with Marie Fry, who introduced her to the idea of spreading the Christian faith among drummer boys and other soldiers billeted away from home. On return to Tralee after leaving school, she began informal Bible classes with some young soldiers, a couple of evenings a week at Oak Villa. By 1870 work among the regiment billeted in Tralee increased, and she rented rooms at 15 Nelson St. to accommodate the growing numbers of interested soldiers. Her first Soldiers’ Home at King St., Cork opened on 10 June 1877. It provided a coffee room, meeting room, reading room, and bedrooms to soldiers garrisoned in the city. Joined in her work by a Londoner, Theodora Schofield, Sandes took a maternal approach to her interaction with the soldiers; indeed, she encouraged them to call her ‘Mother’.
By 1898 there were fifteen homes (eleven in Ireland and four in India), all with a Christian ethos, and all designed to cater for the recreation of soldiers. A staff of thirty-five women volunteered for the homes. Locations included Queenstown (Cobh) (1890), Dublin (1894), Dundalk (1895), and the Curragh (1899) in Ireland; and Rawalpindi (1896), Quetta (1898), and Murree (1898) in India. At this time, Schofield was sent to oversee the Indian homes, and Eva McGuire, from Bangor, Co. Down, became Sandes’s assistant in Ireland. In 1899 work expanded to South Africa, where canvas homes were established at British army camps during the Boer war (1899–1902) under the direction of John Kinahan from Belfast. Similar ‘tent’ homes were then created in Ireland at summer camps, the first of which was opened in the Glen of Imaal, Co. Wicklow (c.1901).
Sandes’s biographer M. Helen Jeffrey observes that although she had always thought of herself as ‘a true Irish woman’, there could be no doubt that her sympathies would be with the British army and the RIC (Jeffrey, 97). After the war of independence, thirteen homes in Ireland closed. Jeffrey claims the home in Dundalk became a ‘haven of refuge’ for the demobilising RIC prior to its closure in 1922 (ibid., 98). However, the Curragh, Dublin, and Cobh homes remained open to cater for the new Irish army. Sandes moved her base of operations from the Curragh to the Ballykinlar camp, Co. Down, when the British army left the Free State.
At the time of her death on 19 August 1934 at Ballykinlar, Co. Down, twenty homes existed in Ireland, Britain, India, and Jamaica. She was buried in Tyrella military cemetery, near Ballykinlar, with a military guard of honour in attendance. The Belfast News Letter of 22 August remembered her as ‘a true friend of the British “Tommy”’ for sixty-six years. The homes, whose mission expanded to include airmen in 1938, were continued under the guidance of Eva McGuire.