Maker: Louisa Johnson

Panel number: 365

Petition sheet number: 436

Person honouring: Edith Hansard

Relationship to maker: Both nurses

Edith Laura Hansard was born in London in 1862, the third child of Mary Ann Root and Charles James Hansard. Mary Ann died shortly after Edith’s birth. About 1870, Charles brought his young family to New Zealand.

Edith began training as a nurse at Napier Hospital in 1892 when she was 30. She acted for a short time as Matron but resigned in 1898 to work as a private nurse. In 1902 she obtained recently introduced state registration and moved to Christchurch, where she worked first with the Nurse Maude District Nursing Service and then as a nurse with the Plunket Society. During the 1918 influenza epidemic she helped set up and supervise a home in Armagh St for infants and small children whose mothers were unwell. 

Edith retired in 1921 and lived first in Feilding and then back in Hawke’s Bay, where she died in 1959 at the age of 96.

Panel materials: Recycled fabrics from Vinnies Re-Sew; 3-dimensional camellia stiffened with dacron.