NURSE’S BIG LEGACY

Southland Times, Issue 22009, 8 May 1933, Page 12

NURSE’S BIG LEGACY

SERVICE AND DEVOTION. BEQUEST OF £15,000. WAR-TIME INCIDENT RECALLED. Behind the announcement of a handsome legacy of £15,000 which has come to a Scots nurse in recognition of many years of service and devotion to a wealthy South American merchant lies the untold story of a drama in a war-time hospital. For the past 10 years Sister Margaret Nicholl Caird has watched unceasingly over the health of her employer, Mr George Cox, formerly of Rose, Innes, Cox and Company, of Valparaiso, who amassed a large fortune. Every morning a Rolls Royce would draw up outside his flat in Queen’s Gate Place and the tall old man of 90 would enter the car with his nurse. In January of this year Mr Cox died leaving a fortune of £156,997, and now it has been announced that Sister Caird is to have her reward—incidentally it will also be a reward for her bravery in a war-time incident. When she was 32 she joined the Red Cross in 1914 and was sent to the war hospital at Hayling Island recently said a friend. “There she experienced the most terrifying incident of her life. An officer who had been badly wounded suddenly had a mental collapse under the strain of his sufferings. “No one discovered how the man gained possession of a revolver, but Sister Caird suddenly came upon him as he was about to shoot himself. She tried at first to soothe him, but when the moment came she closed with him in a struggle for possession of the weapon. The noise of the struggle brought others to her aid, and the officer was overpowered. “How many lives she saved besides her own no one will know, but she was awarded the Royal Red Cross Medal, and in 1919 left the service to enter King George Hospital in Stamford Street.” Sister Caird has left her present address and only two or three friends know where she is staying. Every post brings bags of letters from people all over the country offering her propositions for making hundreds per cent, on their own pet investments. The total amount asked for by the beggars is more than her legacy! She comes from Dundee, where she was trained, and perhaps a little two-seater car will soon be seen humming up the Great North Road carrying not Sister Caird the nurse, but Miss N. N. Caird on holiday for the rest of her life.