Elsie Knocker

Elsie Knocker, MM, OStJ was a British nurse and ambulance driver in World War I who, together with her friend Mairi Chisholm, won numerous medals for bravery and for saving the lives of thousands of soldiers on the Western Front in Belgium. Dubbed The Madonnas of Pervyse by the press, the two became the most photographed women of the war.

She was born Elizabeth Blackall Shapter in Exeter, Devon onJune 1884, the youngest of five children to Dr. Thomas Lewis and Charlotte Shapter . During her childhood she picked up the nickname, Elsie. She was orphaned at an early age. Her mother died when she was four years old and her father died from tuberculosis two years later. She was subsequently adopted by Lewis Edward Upcott, a teacher at Marlborough College, and his wife Emily who sent her to be educated at St. Nicholass, Folkestone, and then at the exclusive Chteau Lutry in Switzerland.

Source: Wikipedia