Edith Maud Drummond-Hay

Edith Maud Drummond-Hay (1872–1960) was a Scottish Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse and amateur artist who documented her First World War experiences with detailed sketches of life in military hospitals in Scotland and France. She was awarded the Associate of the Royal Red Cross (RRC 2nd Class) medal in 1919 in recognition of her service in France. Her albums were discovered by family members after her death and are now held in the archives of the British Red Cross. They provide a vivid pictorial record of her wartime experiences.

Early life Edith Maud Drummond-Hay was born on 28 February 1872 in Kinfauns, Perthshire to Henry Maurice Drummond, a renowned ornithologis t, and Charlotte Elizabeth Richardson Hay. When her parents married, they had each taken the others' surname and become Drummond-Hay. Edith had three sisters, Alice, Constance and Lucy, and two brothers, James and Harry. The 1891 census records the family as residing at Seggieden Mansion House.

Wartime volunteering Drummond-Hay joined the British Red Cross VAD as a nurse at the start of the war. She worked at No III Stationary Hospital, attached to the British Expeditionary Force at Barnatal, near Rouen; the Sick Sister's Hospital, Abbeville; and No 8 Stationary Hospital, Boulogne.

Wartime artist During her service in the VAD, she kept meticulous sketches capturing the experiences of life inside military hospitals in Perth and France. These pictorial diaries were discovered in an album after her death, when her nephew Peter Drummond-Hay moved into her old house in Glencarse in the 1980s.