Second to last of twelve children of a Yorkshire rector, she left home against her father's wish and became a nurse in Walsall, a town of pits and foundries: burns, fractures, roof falls. Through the smallpox epidemic of 1875 she ran the isolation hospital, doing the washing and the cleaning as well. She died of cancer at forty-six, having told no one.
In their own words
I have no one to speak to, no time to read, and my letters are company at meal-times.
Letter of 4 March 1875, the Epidemic Hospital, Walsall, in Margaret Lonsdale, Sister Dora: A Biography, London, Kegan Paul, 1881, p. 153
I am writing this while waiting for my potatoes to boil.
Letter of 4 March 1875, the Epidemic Hospital, Walsall, in Margaret Lonsdale, Sister Dora: A Biography, London, Kegan Paul, 1881, p. 153
I have got a servant, the plague of my life. It is good to have some cross, so I take her as such.
Letter of 10 March 1875, in Margaret Lonsdale, Sister Dora: A Biography, London, Kegan Paul, 1881, p. 154
It is a month to-day since I came here. I have never had my bonnet on, nor even been to the gate.
Letter of 27 March 1875, in Margaret Lonsdale, Sister Dora: A Biography, London, Kegan Paul, 1881, p. 156