Elizabeth Webber Harris

Elizabeth Webber Harris was an English nurse born in Kent in 1834 who is remembered for her care of soldiers during the cholera epidemic of 1869 in northern India. She was married to an officer of the 104th Bengal Fusiliers and was the only woman with the regiment near Peshawar when cholera struck, nursing the sick and organising activities to keep up morale. Because women could not receive the Victoria Cross, the regiment's officers obtained the permission of Queen Victoria to present her with a gold replica of it, inscribed for her indomitable pluck during the epidemic. It remains the only such cross given to a woman. Much of what is known of her time in India rests on her own account. The cross was later displayed at the Royal United Services Institute and, after 2013, at the Imperial War Museum. She died in London in 1917.