Mairi Chisholm
| Mairi Chisholm | |
|---|---|
One of "The Madonnas of Pervyse"
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| Born |
26 February 1896 Nairn, Scotland |
| Died | 22 August 1981 (aged 85) Nairn, Scotland |
| Years active | 1914–1918 |
| Known for |
being awarded: Order of Léopold II (1915) Order of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1915) Military Medal (1917) 1914 Star (1917) Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1918) |
| Medical career | |
| Profession | Nurse |
Mairi Lambert Gooden-Chisholm of Chisholm, MM, OStJ (26 February 1896 – 22 August 1981), known as Mairi Chisholm, was a Scottish nurse and ambulance driver in the First World War. She, together with her friend Elsie Knocker, 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, achieving recognition not only as women but for working on the front lines against official British regulations.
Chisholm was born on 26 February 1896 in Nairn, Scotland to Captain Roderick Gooden-Chisholm and Margaret Fraser. Her family was independently wealthy and even owned a plantation in Trinidad. When Chisholm was a child, the family moved from Scotland to Dorset. As a teen, she witnessed her older brother, Uailean, who owned a Royal Enfield 425cc, competing at rallies and at the Bournemouth speed trials. Around this time, and against his wife's wishes, her father bought her a Douglas motorbike. Chisholm spent hours in the family stables stripping down the bikes and repairing them. She was just 18 years old when, while roaring round the Hampshire and Dorset lanes, she met thirty-year-old Elsie Knocker, a divorcee and mother of a young son. They became fast friends and soon began competing in motorcycle and sidecar trials together.
When war was declared in 1914, Knocker wrote to Chisholm that there was "work to be done", and suggested they go to London to become dispatch riders for the Women's Emergency Corps. Chisholm rode her motorbike all the way from Dorset to the capital. It was while acting as a courier in this way that she was spotted making hairpin corners in the city by a Dr. Hector Munro. Munro was setting up a Flying Ambulance Corps to help the Belgians who had been caught unawares by the German invasion and invited her to join his team, as she describes in a June 1976 interview:
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