Agnes Reston

Agnes Reston, born Agnes Harkness in 1771, was a Scottish wartime nurse of the Peninsular War, remembered as the Heroine of Matagorda for her bravery during an early phase of the Siege of Cádiz. She was the wife of James Reston, a sergeant in the 94th Regiment of Foot, and in 1810 she went with her husband and their four year old son to the small fort at Matagorda near Cádiz. When French forces bombarded the fort she took her son to the bomb-proof and helped the surgeon dress the growing numbers of wounded, tearing up the family linen for bandages, and she braved the fire to fetch water. Officers later urged that she be given support, but the Secretary of War judged he had no funds for it. By 1844 she was a pauper in the Town's Hospital in Glasgow, earning a living as a sick nurse, until an appeal backed mostly by the military secured her an annuity of 30 pounds a year. She died on Christmas Eve 1856 aged 85 and is buried in Glasgow's Southern Necropolis.