Founder of the English V.A.D. force, born at Bristol on the 23rd of November 1875, the daughter of the poet and critic John Addington Symonds. In 1900 she married the painter Charles Wellington Furse, who died prematurely in 1904. On the outbreak of war in 1914 Mrs. Furse realized that the existing number of nurses would prove totally inadequate to deal with the enormous amount of work which might be expected, and in September 1914 she proceeded to France with a number of assistants, these forming the nucleus of the V.A.D. force (Voluntary Aid Detachment). In January 1915 she returned to England, and the V.A.D. work was then officially recognized as a department of the Red Cross organization. Mrs. Furse resigned her position in 1917, and the same year became director of the W.R.N.S. She received the order of the Royal Red Cross in 1916, and the G.B.E. in 1917.
