with polio whilst working as a Nurse in Nobby or Clifton. Press reports from Australia in the 1930s quote Kenny as saying she developed her method while caring for meningitis patients on troopships during the First World War. Victor Cohn and Wade Alexander observed in their biographies of Kenny that she published several versions of the story during the early 1940s. Alexander claims the most dependable corroboration of Kenny's story is likely to be in a letter written in 1956 to Victor Cohn from the Toowoomba journalist T. Thompson, but Cohn did not give the letter sufficient credence to cite it in his biography. Recent research concludes that Kenny most likely developed her therapeutic techniques while treating paralysis patients during the 1920s. World War I In May 1915 Kenny announced she was closing St Canice to join the War effort in Europe. She travelled at her own expense to London, where she hoped to serve as a nurse in the First World War. She was not eligible to serve with the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) as she was not a qualified nurse. She carried a letter of recommendation from Dr McDonnell, which Victor Cohn believed assisted her in being assigned as a Nurse on the crew of the HMAT Suevic. The Suevic was a "dark ship", so named because unlike hospital ships they were not painted white as protection under the Hague Convention. These transport ships were used to carry war goods and soldiers to the front; returning with wounded soldiers. Kenny's war service records state her date of appointment to the No. 1 Section, Special Transport Service, as the 28 July 1916. Kenny served on these missions throughout the war, making 8 round trips (plus one round the world via the Panama Canal). In 1917 she earned the title "Sister", which in the AANS is the equivalent of a First Lieutenant. Kenny used that title for the rest of her life and was criticized by some for doing so, but she was officially promoted to the rank during her wartime service. She claimed in her autobiography to have served for a few weeks as matron to a military hospital at Enoggera, near Brisbane, but an investigation in 1955 into Kenny’s war service by the Officer in Charge, AIF Base Records, concluded there was no evidence of Kenny being attached to any military hospitals in Queensland during the war.