Margaret Ellen Evans was the daughter of Daniel John Evans and Emma Thompson who had married on the 19th of June 1867 at All Saints Church, Stamford in Lincolnshire.

Daniel was a solicitor and the couple made their home in Stamford where Daniel worked. They had three sons and three daughters before Margaret was born in the summer of 1877, by which time the family was living at Stamford Baron (a parish in the south part of Stamford, historically part of Northamptonshire).

On the 20th of July, Margaret was taken for baptism to the church where her parents had married

When the census was taken in 1881, the Evans family lived at number 40, High Street, Stamford Baron. The eldest son, Richard, was away at boarding school in Kent, but all of the remaining children were still at home. Three year old Margaret had a younger brother named Arthur and an older cousin lived with the family. Daniel employed several servants to support them including a nurse, cook, housemaid, laundry-maid, nursemaid and gardener.

The family remained on High Street for at least twenty years. Daniel became the Resident Director of the Stamford, Spalding and Boston Banking Company and also a Clerk of the Peace in Spalding.

By April 1901, just three of the offspring were still at home; Margaret, older sister Sophia and younger brother Arthur who was a student at Oxford University. Margaret’s mother had died aged 59 a few months earlier and Daniel still employed four servants to help run the household.

Just after Christmas the following year, Daniel was found dying in his bed. Probate was granted to three of Margaret’s brothers, and her father’s considerable effects meant that she was able to live independently.

When the census was taken in the spring of 1911 Margaret was living on King’s Mill Lane, Stamford, about a third of a mile from the home in which she was brought up. Her younger sister Mary lived with her and Margaret employed a live-in housekeeper.

Margaret joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment that year and began working at Stamford Infirmary in 1914. In the spring of 1915 she began nursing and served at 4th Northern General Hospital, Lincoln in buildings that had formerly housed Lincoln Grammar school until July 1916.

She was then posted overseas and served at 83rd General Hospital near Boulogne until she became too ill to work. It looks likely that Margaret contracted an infectious disease, as she died at 14th Stationary Hospital, an isolation hospital in Wimereux about three miles outside of Boulogne on the 22nd of July 1917, aged 40.

She was buried in Wimereux Communal Cemetery and after the war was given a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone.

For her service to her country she earned the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Her accrued pay and War Gratuity Payment were paid into her estate; probate was granted to Margaret’s eldest brother, Richard. In September 1917 it was decided at a meeting of the South Lincolnshire Branch of the British Red Cross Society that a message of sympathy would be sent to Margaret’s relatives.

Margaret is named on the memorial shrine at All Saints’ Church in Stamford and is also remembered on the memorial plaques on the Stamford Borough plaques on the wall of Browne’s Hospital on Broad Street.