Mary Ward

Mary Ellen Holloway Amos Ward, BEM (4 April 1884 – 29 March 1972) was an English nurse to the boat people on the waterways. She was a significant figure in the history of the British canal system. Biography Ward was born on 4 April 1884, the daughter of rope and twine manufacturer Thomas Amos and Sarah Ellen Hollowell. The family life centred on her birthplace of Stoke Bruerne, one of the major junctions of the English canals. She was never professionally qualified as a nurse, but she spent ten years travelling as what was then called a "nursing sister" in convents in Europe and the USA before returning home to nurse her sick father. This brought her into contact with the boat families again, many of whom she had known when she was growing up. "People think my boat people are dirty and crude and want to get rid of them, but they are wonderful, proud, wise people". She married Charlie Ward and, as her father's health declined, he took over the running of the family business. When this moved to a shed (formerly occupied by the stonemason) by the side of Lock 15, it became her surgery from where she administered medicine and care to the boat people. At first this was in an unofficial capacity and until the late 1930s she financed it from her own pocket. At this point the canal companies (precursors to British Waterways and then the Canal & River Trust) began to recognise the importance of her work and she was appointed as a "consultant sister" to long-distance boatmen and families. Over several decades she acted as nurse, midwife, and even amanuensis to the mostly uneducated, illiterate boat people. She retired in 1965. She died seven years later in 1972 and was buried in the Baptist churchyard in Roade.