Catharine Washington
1892–1972), volunteer ambulance driver and member of the FANY
Catharine Washington known as Pat Waddell born Catharine Marguerite Beauchamp Waddell (9 January 1892 – 25 December 1972) was a British volunteer ambulance driver, writer and member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She lost a leg but returned in the First World War and she then served again in the Second World War. She was awarded the French Croix de Guerre, the Belgian Médaille de la reine Élisabeth and the Polish Grand Cross of Merit (military class).
Life
Washington was born in 1892 with the name of Catharine Marguerite Beauchamp Waddell. She was known as "Pat". She was the last of three children born to Catharine Beatrice Beauchamp Thompson and her husband Cranston Waddell. Her father manufactured woollens and she was born at Howard Cottage at Warwick Bridge. They lived in the parish of Wetheral in north Cumberland.
She joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in 1912. The yeomanry had been founded five years before with the intention of taking first aid to wounded soldiers using horses.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Catharine Washington” as 1892–1972), volunteer ambulance driver and member of the FANY. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1892–1972), volunteer ambulance driver and member of the FANY. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18526710. VIAF identifies the subject as 161234342. The Library of Congress control number is n89643080. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1972 and 1912.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Catharine Washington” 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.