Emily MacManus

Emily Elvira Primrose MacManus, CBE (18 April 1886 – 22 February 1978) was an Irish nurse who served in France during World War I. She was a matron at Bristol Royal Infirmary, then at Guy's Hospital in London, serving at the latter during World War II. She was the president of the Royal College of Nursing from 1942 to 1944.

Early life MacManus was born in Battersea, London on 18 April 1886, to Leonard Strong McManus and Julia Emily McManus, née Boyd. Her father was the brother of Caroline, wife of Sir Edwin Cooper Perry and son of James and Charlotte McManus, originally from Killeaden, Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland. Though not born in Ireland, her father told her that Killeaden would always be her home. She was the eldest of four surviving children and her siblings were Dermot Arthur (Diarmuid A. MacManus), Sarah and Desmond.

She was originally educated by a governess before attending a day school in Nightingale Lane, Clapham and a boarding school near Worthing. MacManus later wrote in her biography Fifty Years of Nursing - Matron of Guy's, published in 1956, that it was the responsibility of nurses to create homeliness in the "midst of the mud and blood, dust and death, in which they spent most of their days".

MacManus died in the Sacred Heart Hospital in Castlebar, Mayo, on 22 February 1978, aged 91. She was buried in the cemetery of St Michael's Parish Church in Ardnaree, Ballina. In 2007, Guy's Hospital named a building Emily MacManus House in her honour.

Works Hospital Administration for Women, 1934, Faber and Faber, London Matron of Guy's, London 1956, Andrew Melrose, with a foreword by L. A. G. Strong