HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8681, 14 March 1914, Page 6

HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA

DEATH OF WOMAN WHO WENT THROUGH THE WAR. .

Mrs Elizabeth Evans, one of the three women who went with their husbands through the Crimean war, died on January 31st at North Sheen (England), at the age of 84. For over forty years she had lived in a little ivy-clad cottage, and had. successfully conducted a little laundry business, the profits of which, with a small pension, kept her from want. In the fifties of the last century her husband joined the King’s Own Lancashire Regiment, which at the outbreak of hostilities was ordered to Russia. From the moment the three wives landed in the Crimea they parted company, and did not meet again for two years.

Mrs Evans remembered to the last a remark made by an officer who galloped along the ridge where she was standing just before the battle of the Alma. “Look at that!” he exclaimed, with a, sweep of the hand, as the troops were forming on the heights, “for the Queen of England would give a great deal to witness such a sight.” Mrs Evans’s chief anxiety that day was for her husband, who was in the battle, but fortunately he came out unhurt. The colours of the regiment, which had been badly torn in the engagement were entrusted to Mrs Evans, who had the duty of sewing up the rents in the silk. She was given permission upon the death of her husband to wear the medals which he had gained. , _ During the campaign her husband, was taken prisoner, and she herself was stricken with fever.