Catherine Roy
British nurse (1883-1976)
Catherine Murray Roy, (24 January 1883 – 14 August 1976) was a decorated Scottish military nurse who served at the front during the First World War. She was later Matron-in-Chief of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service.
Early life and education
Roy was born on 24 January 1883, one of eight children of Rev. John Roy, minister of the Church of Scotland at Drymen, Stirlingshire. She was educated at Glasgow High School and at Esdaile, Edinburgh. She trained at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow.
Nursing career
Roy joining the regular army as a staff nurse in 1909 and was one of a group of 50 British nurses to be sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force one week after the war started. She served in both France and Belgium and was mentioned in despatches. In 1917, she was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry, displayed in the performance of her duties on the occasion of hostile air raids on Casualty Clearing Stations in the field. At the end of the war she was awarded the Royal Red Cross, receiving this honour from King George V at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, on 5 July 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Catherine Roy” 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.