Recalled for efforts during the Great War

Eugene Byrne remembers a woman who died 100 years ago this week and who is commemorated on her gravestone as "the soldier's friend.

- 

Elizabeth and William Pearce, from an old family photo sent in by a reader some years ago

A FEW days after her death following a short illness on September 26 1925, Elizabeth Pearce was buried at Arnos Vale Cemetery.

The turnout ran to thousands; ex-servicemen's associations were officially represented, as were her former business contacts, and many others whose lives she had touched came to see her laid to rest.

On her gravestone were carved the words "the soldier's friend", something which puzzles the cemetery's many visitors nowadays.

Elizabeth Pearce, born Elizabeth Atkinson in 1871, was one of those well-to-do Bristol women who found an urgent purpose in life during the First World War. But even if the war had never happened, she would have been remembered with affection and respect.

She had no airs and graces, they said, even though she had her own chauffeur and car. More importantly, she was generous in helping the less fortunate. The newspaper obituaries were full of praise for the discreet way she often helped those in need.

But it was for her one-woman efforts during the Great War that she was best remembered, and why so many old soldiers, many with tears in their eyes, turned up to pay their respects.

In 1914, she was running the Fish Market on Baldwin Street - the building is still there nowadays, and has been a pub for many years. Her husband, William Charles Pearce, was a businessman in his own right, and by the time war broke out they had had 11 children.