Loreen Meyer

Female

Birth date: 9.11.1892 y.

Cabin: Nurses-32

Biography:

Loreen Meyer was born in Croydon, London on November 9th, 1892. Loreen’s family was in a unique situation, as her grandparents fled Prussia in early 1871 after Kaiser Wilhelm the II took reign and united Germany as one, which led her parents and later siblings to be born in the United Kingdom. As Loreen grew up, her parents tried to remind her of her ancestry as much as possible since they were scares of losing their past. Non-the-less, Loreen blended in with every other English kid playing in the streets. When Loreen turned 6, her family moved out of London to a smaller community in Middlesex, and soon Loreen’s childhood was always on a treadmill to catch up, as she was constantly moving all other Southeastern England, briefly living in London a couple of times as well as Surrey, Essex, Kent, Hampshire and several more county’s. Loreen often confided and bonded with her older sister Beatrice, and often shared the same bed with all her siblings since her parents never had time to set up seperate bedrooms for all four. But the biggest problem of wasn’t a permanent home, it was her behaviour. She hated the concept of going to school just to be taught social etiquette, she wasn’t learning actual skills and concepts she needed, instead she was learning how to curtsy correctly and to speak softly, which went against all of her ideologies. She felt misrepresented and her mother didn’t help at all, saying it’s just the way it is. Until one day in 1906 when she witnessed a public protest of Women’s Suffrage, seeing banners and speech promoting Women’s Rights and equality. Her mother rolled her eyes at it and felt it was silly for women to protest, however for the first time in her life, her daughter Loreen finally felt seen and heard. As the years passed, Loreen began to become more aligned to the Suffragette movement, wearing purple and green pins or clothes, and purchasing the Suffragette newspaper. Staying a supporter from the shadows as she was worried of her parent’s reaction to her being a Suffragette. She dreamt of joining a protest or something to make her stand in this political climate mean something. One night in October 1910, when Loreen was 17, she caught wind of a protest that would happen in Southampton’s city centre. It was a chance that was too good to skip, and she knew she had to take it. On November 4th, 1910, less then a week from her birthday, she lied to her parents about going to school, instead taking a seperate path to join the protest in Southampton. When she arrived, the streets were full and bustling of multiple women in colours varying from purple, green and white, the colours of the Suffragette movement. She quickly joined the growing crowd and protested rights for her sex, blending in as nobody knew she was underage. Suddenly the protest took a turn to the worse, a peaceful protest where the only risk was claustrophobia suddenly got violent as they picked up bricks and started throwing it at windows of the multiple houses and shops that lined the streets, being mostly owned by the wealthy and men. Loreen knew of these protests and how they could get dangerous, but she wasn’t aware this protest would be one of them. She froze in moment for several seconds before regaining control, and she tried to move through the growing protest, tripping and dirtying up her dress that she specifically picked out for the event, looking up as she saw an explosion implode and destroy an mailbox right in front of her. She quickly got up and ran far away as possible, to escape the growing chaos, seeing multiple police officers rushing to contain the situation. She ran back home and started sobbing in Beatrice’s arms. Beatrice knew from her fashion, she was at the protest in the city, and swiftly pulled her into her bedroom to comfort her from the trauma she endured. She still wore her pro-women fashion and pins and read the Suffragette newspaper, but she couldn’t shake off the sight of seeing that bombing happen right in front of her, nobody got harmed but the sight of destruction really hit her straight to the core. It changed her in a way, making her more distant from everyone except Beatrice. The change in her also changed her perspective, she obviously still wanted woman’s rights to happen, but she didn’t want people to end up hurting themselves from these things, and she got the idea to sign up for volunteers at the Red Cross Organisation. She remains a nurse in training until war broke out in Continental Europe in 1914, specifically with Britain now at war with Germany. Her German ancestry was treated as evil and cruel, with anti German propaganda being hoisted everywhere she went. She was worried about how it would go down if people found out that she was German by blood. She changed her surname temporarily to Harrison to avoid anybody realising her identity. She kept this secret until October 1915, when the H.M.H.S Brittanic docked in Southampton, and the Red Cross conscripted her to become a war-time nurse on the Brittanic, her first time being out of Britain, and the first time in over a year that she began to use her last name again.

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