Louisa McLaughlin

Louisa was the eldest of three sisters, one of whom, Sophia, served as a nurse with the Universities' Mission to Central Africa for five years, until she took charge of wards at the Civil Hospital in Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1893.

Louisa was trained as a nurse by Sister Dora, who cared for industrial workers in Walsall, to become her favourite pupil.

The Society, which undertook relief work for the London poor and gave lectures on health education, was founded by Europe's first modern woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell, an Englishwoman who had gained a degree in New York.

After a month in Sedan, Emma and Louisa returned to England, where they learned that the National Society would not support them if they set up an ambulance for which the Bishop of Orléans was pleading.

This death-rate was far the lowest of any field station in the area because Emma and Louisa had insisted on "exquisite cleanliness" at a time when most surgeons did not wash their hands.

Armed with green-lined parasols and Hartin's Crimson Salt disinfectant, they took care of wounded Servian soldiers who had been struggling against Turkish oppression.

Upon returning to England, Emma and Louisa used their joint capital to set up one of London's only two private nursing homes.

Louisa co-authored with Emma two accounts of their nursing experiences Our Adventures During the War of 1870, and Service in Servia Under the Red Cross.

They also wrote a brief history of wartime nursing titled Under the Red Cross, the last two chapters of which document a multitude of failings in Colonel Loyd-Lindsay's chairmanship of the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War.