Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes CBE RRC DStJ (8 July 1854 – 16 February 1919) was matron of the London Hospital from 1880 to 1919.

Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes (she spelled her name Lückes with the umlaut until World War I)[1][2] was born in Exeter, Devon on 8 July 1854 into an upper middle-class family.

[3] Her father, Henry Richard Luckes, was a bank manager and entrepreneur who invested in local railways, and mines.

Miss Luckes, the eldest of three daughters, was educated at dame schools in Malvern, and at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and possibly in Dresden.

[2][5] At 26, Luckes was the youngest of the five candidates interviewed and several of the Committee thought her 'too young and too pretty' and were wary of appointing someone with relatively little experience.

[2] However, the confidence of the committee members was well founded as she set about introducing a programme of reforms to improve the standard of nursing at The London, although it should be remembered that a Sub-Committee, to review the system, had been appointed in the previous year.

[2] The two met periodically and Nightingale became her mentor, and active supporter when a House of Lords' committee was established to investigate charges against her.

[2][8][9] Nightingale worked strenuously behind the scenes to clear her name, notably by eliciting the help of her cousin, General Sir Lothian Nicholson, who was a governor at the hospital.

she remarked in a last letter: "I left your room yesterday feeling so much better for having been with you," her anxieties "melting away," so that she could be "strong" again, and "see clearly the way to go".

After an application form had been filled in, there was a personal interview with Matron, a medical examination and a month's trial before being accepted as a probationer.

In the summer of 1897, a typhoid epidemic broke out in Maidstone and nine of Luckes' Probationers were seconded to help, including Edith Cavell.

The original school was established in Bow, East London, in a Georgian property donated by Lord Tredegar.

Both Florence Nightingale and Eva Luckes were opposed to registration on the grounds that the essential qualities of a good nurse would be subordinated to theory and exams.

[19] Luckes was decorated a number of times during her career, including the medals of the RRC, the CBE and Lady of Grace of the Order of Saint John.

[2][5] She was cremated and her ashes laid to rest behind a plaque on the north side of St Philip's Church, now the Medical School Library.

Anyone who has interest or influence in the strategy of nurse training and discipline might find value in reading, and perhaps quoting, these introductions.

Matron Luckes appears as a supporting character in the opera Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man by Laurent Petitgirard.