Emma Maria Pearson

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Emma Maria Pearson (1828-1893), the daughter of Captain Charles Pearson, RN, of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, was a writer and one of the first British women to serve as a nurse for the Red Cross. Both the French and Germans awarded medals to her for running ambulances (as field hospitals were then called) during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. She also gained the Gold Cross of the Order of the Takova for work in the Serbo-Turkish war, the prelude to the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78). An account of Emma's nursing career is given in the article on her partner Louisa McLaughlin (1836-1921) who shared the same wartime adventures. Later they jointly set up one of London's only two private nursing homes where they assisted the originator of antiseptic surgery Joseph Lister in many operations.