Elsie Knocker

Elsie Knocker, later Baroness de T'Serclaes, was a British nurse and ambulance driver in the First World War. She was born Elizabeth Blackall Shapter on 29 July 1884 and died on 26 April 1978. Together with her friend Mairi Chisholm she worked on the Western Front in Belgium, where the two women won numerous medals for bravery and were credited with saving the lives of thousands of soldiers. The press called them The Madonnas of Pervyse, and they were among the most photographed women of the war. Her story is usually told alongside that of Chisholm, and it is remembered as an example of women taking up front-line care of the wounded at a time when nursing near the fighting was still unusual.