BEGG Eileen M

Eileen Cumming was born in Richmond, Surrey on the 5th August 1907, the daughter of Frank and Alice Cumming. It is not known when the family moved to China but she was christened at Shanghai, China on the 27th March 1910 and her brother, Michael Henry Cumming, was born in Shanghai on 19th October 1911. Sadly their father, Frederick, died in the city on the 28th November 1912.

In the supplement of the London and China Express of 17th July 1930 under the Shanghai section:
“Mrs F.A. Cumming announces the engagement of her younger daughter, Eileen, to Mr S.D. Begg.”

The couple were married at the H.M. Consulate-General, Shanghai on the 11th October 1930 and the following short report appears in the same newspaper of 6th November 1930 under the Shanghai section:
“A pretty wedding took place when Miss Eileen Margaret Cumming became the bride of Mr Stewart Duncan Begg. The bride is the daughter of the late Mr Frederick Alexander Cumming, and was attended by Miss Norah Ritchie and Miss Lala Jensen.”

At some point Eileen joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps Nursing Detachment; in 1941 she working as a nurse at the temporary hospital of St Stephen’s. The following information is courtesy and copyright of a family member:
Just before dawn on Christmas Morning, Japanese troops broke into the temporary hospital located in the main building at St Stephen’s College. In an orgy of unfettered violence, Japanese troops bayoneted patients in their beds, killed doctors and medical orderlies and raped Chinese and British nurses. On Christmas Eve, CSM Stuart (‘Tooti’) Begg, a member of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC) attached to the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) having been cut off had swum from Repulse Bay to Stanley to escape capture by the Japanese. Injured and exhausted he was admitted to the temporary hospital. He was surprised to find his wife, Eileen Begg, at the hospital. She was a volunteer military nurse and had been transferred from Bowen Road Military Hospital to the temporary hospital at St Stephen’s. She spent the night of 24 December at her husband’s bedside. The ward was dimly lit by hurricane lamps and the windows were covered by mattresses to provide black-out and to protect patients from shrapnel and flying glass. They could hear the noise of battle, machine gun fire, mortar fire and explosions as the fighting drew closer to the hospital. When the Japanese broke into the main ward, Eileen Begg helped her husband to get under the bed. Stuart Begg stated in an affidavit that while they huddled under the bed they could see the mattress above them pierced several times by the point of a bayonet. Eileen saved her husband’s life but lost hers. She was one of five British nurses who were raped and she was one of three who were raped, mutilated and killed that Christmas Morning.

Eileen’s body was never found; her name is included on a marker in Stanley Military Cemetery, China.

Eileen Begg’s name on the marker in Stanley Military Cemetery. Photo courtesy and copyright of Ginny Jones