Violetta Thurstan
nurse and weaver
Violetta Thurstan, MM (4 February 1879 – 13 April 1978) was an English nurse, author, weaver, and administrator whose work included help for refugees and prisoners of war. She knew several languages, travelled frequently and wrote a number of books. The first was about her experiences of nursing in dangerous troublespots during the First World War. She was honoured by three countries for her courage while nursing in the war, and was awarded the Military Medal.
Early life
Anna Violet Thurstan was born on 4 February 1879 in Ore, Sussex. She was the eldest child of Anna (née Reid) and Edward Paget Thurstan, a doctor, and had three younger brothers. The family moved often and the teenage "Vi", who would later call herself Violetta, went to boarding schools including a German Catholic school and the Ladies' College, Guernsey. She started nursing in the UK in 1897 and trained at the London Hospital, Whitechapel under matron Eva Luckes between 1900 and 1903. From 1905 to 1907 she was Home Sister at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Until 1913, Thurtsan worked in a number of institutions, including a convalescent home in Hythe, a Surgical hospital in Spain and a children's home in Duxhurst.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18572244. VIAF identifies the subject as 76685387. The Library of Congress control number is n88674880. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1978, 1897 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Violetta Thurstan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.