Violetta Thurstan

Violetta Thurstan, MM (4 February 1879 – 13 April 1978) was an English nurse, author, weaver, and administrator whose work included help for refugees and prisoners of war. She knew several languages, travelled frequently and wrote a number of books. The first was about her experiences of nursing in dangerous troublespots during the First World War. She was honoured by three countries for her courage while nursing in the war, and was awarded the Military Medal.

Early life Anna Violet Thurstan was born on 4 February 1879 in Ore, Sussex. She was the eldest child of Anna (née Reid) and Edward Paget Thurstan, a doctor, and had three younger brothers. The family moved often and the teenage "Vi", and the Ladies' College, Guernsey. She started nursing in the UK in 1897 and trained at the London Hospital, Whitechapel under matron Eva Luckes between 1900 and 1903. From 1905 to 1907 she was Home Sister at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. and a children's home in Duxhurst. She simultaneously built on her language skills and studying history and geography. This led to an external degree from the University of St Andrews: an LLA in modern languages and fine art.

First World War

Thurstan joined the British Red Cross in 1913. From February 1913 she was Matron of the Civil Hospital, Spezia in Italy. During her convalescence in England Thurstan gave lectures in various cities about her experiences. Late in 1916 she was made matron of a hospital in De Panne, close to the Belgian front line, and shortly after that was posted even nearer the front to manage a dressing station in Koksijde. She also received the Russian Cross of St George (4th class), the Belgian Queen Elisabeth Medal, the Serbian Order of St Sava, the 1914 Star and other awards.

The evacuation left her with delayed concussion and she needed another period of convalescence in the UK. She published A text book of war nursing in 1917. Her last posting of the war was as matron to Ostrovo field hospital in Macedonia near the Salonika front between 1917 and 1918. serving until September 1919.

In 1978, she wrote another book about this period of her life, The Hounds of War Unleashed, which does not match all the details of Field Hospital, and may contain fictional elements. One academic suggests that her wartime books are influenced by her "romantic vision" of life. It has also been said that some information about Thurstan's earlier life is unclear and confusing. Thurstan took diploma courses in weaving, dyeing and other textile arts in Sweden, Italy, France and Germany. in the refugee camps in the Libyan desert, under the Egyptian Frontier Districts Administration run by the British. Here she oversaw Bedouin women making carpets.

She wrote on dyes for the Egyptian Horticultural Review and in 1930 published Use of Vegetable Dyes for Beginners, which sold well in four editions, and is still a well-regarded text.

Spanish Civil War and Second World War In 1937 she went to help in the Spanish Civil War, as part of Sir George Young's Universities Ambulance Service, and worked to have prisoners in Almería released.

When the Second World War came she was commissioned in the Women's Royal Naval Service after claiming to be less than fifty years old. Her language skills were deployed in Naval Intelligence, where she boarded ships in searches for contraband. Afterwards she took part in the 1945 post-war Catholic Relief Programme. (She had converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism not long after the First World War.) She worked with displaced people and prisoners of war in Italy, Egypt and Austria, and helped evacuate and resettle children. She then did similar work with the Allied Commission in Austria in 1946–1948. She was made a companion of the Vatican by Pope Pius XII.

Later life In her seventies she went to live in Cornwall where she wove, taught crafts and wrote. She published two novels: the first of them a biographical novel, Stormy Petrel, in 1964 and The Foolish Virgin, inspired by her post-war aid work, in 1966. Thurstan went on travelling, leading a pilgrimage of Cornish women to Rome in 1958, and going to Greece in 1966 as a crafts adviser. She continued to be involved in textile arts within the UK and attended a World Crafts Council meeting in London in 1967. She also advised on a dye garden at Probus Gardens in Truro in 1976. In 1973 she was involved in setting up the Cornwall Crafts Association and at the age of 94 she was made a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen. She died at home in Penryn on 13 April 1978 at the age of 99.