Ella Cleggett's care for TB ex servicemen has Angorichina Hostel from 1927 in Flinders Ranges as main focus
A main focus of the 40-plus years of care by Elle Cleggett (top left, with a memorial to her work at Mitcham cemetery in suburban Adelaide) for ex-servicemen with tuberculoris was the Angorichina Hostel (bottom right) in South Australia’s Flinders Range. Top right: Angorichina patients with examples of creations from the hostel's workshop. (The swastika motif on one is not fully explained in the caption of the image by captain Frank Hurley.)
Images courtesy State Libary of South Australia and Monuments Australia
Ella Cleggett gave more than 40 years service to the early 20th Century cause of caring for former military servicemen and women with tuberculosis, including setting up the Angorichina Hostel in South Australia’s Flinders Range in 1927.
Born in 1884 at Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills to farmer John Cleggett and his former schoolteacher wife Louisa, Cleggett attended the local public school and—as did three of her sisters—trained as a teacher. From 1906, Cleggett's 19 years with the South Australian government education department included teaching at Flinders Street Model School, Adelaide city; Moonta, Burra and at Mount Barker where scarlet fever brought her permanent hearing loss that made her abandon classroom work. Transferring from Thebarton Public School to the Correspondence School, in 1924, she was assessed by an inspector as “enthusiastic, patriotic, a strong influence, critical”.
During World War I, Cleggett was active in the Schools' Patriotic Fund and she met returned servicemen suffering tuberculosis during her visits to Bedford Park Sanatorium. In 1921, the Tubercular Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Association formed the fundraising and welfare Tubercular Soldiers' Aid Society of South Australia, with Cleggett as honorary secretary. The society sought additional benefits and gainful work for those weakened by the disease.
In 1924, Cleggett took leave from the education eepartment to raise money for the society but resigned when she was told she couldn’t do it again. She became the society's full-time paid secretary, bringing determined energy to helping tuberculosis patients and their families who called her “Auntie Cleggett”. Countering the stigma of TB, she named the society’s newsletter the Optimist.
Cleggett petitioned councils, doctors and business firms for contributions, and arranged fundraising balls and concerts. A major target of Cleggett’s fundraising (she raised more than £250,000 for the society), subsidised by the state government, was the Angorichina Hostel that she set up in the warm dry Flinders Ranges where the first World War I ex-servicemen with tuberculosis arrived two weeks after it opened in 1927. More former soldiers arrived after World War II.
L. Lee and W.H. McFarlane of Angorichina Station had given land to the society for the hostel about half way between Parachilna and Blinman. Chalets were built for the patients' bedrooms, the staff and visiting families. As a TB sufferer’s health improved, he did chores in the garden, poultry farm, miling cows and other light work.
A workshop was started where patients learned to craft furniture, incuding from the offcuts of redgum railway sleepers. The workshop was transferred to Adelaide in the 1930s, but the hostel was retained (until 1973) and remained Cleggett’s main concern.
In 1951, Cleggett was granted honorary life membership of the Returned Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia and was appointed a member of the British empire.