Nursing Sister Clara Evans

Clara Evans grew up on Crossley Road in what is now the shop opposite St John's Church in the late 1800s. She became a Sunday School teacher at the Church before moving to the London Hospital to follow a career in nursing on the Mellish Ward.

Her skill and compassion led her to be recommended by her matron on the ward for service in the Second Anglo-Boer War which broke out in South Afica in 1899.

Whilst serving in South Africa, Clara contracted an illness which sadly led to her death. This was the source of much sadness in St Helens when her passing was reported in the local newspaper.

In St John's Church, her fellow Sunday School teachers and the children raised money for a new wooden font cover in her memory. Her sisters gave a stained glass window of three lights to be installed at the west end of the nave. Both memorials remain in the building to this day.







At St Helens Town Hall, a memorial for those of the town who had fallen in the war was being prepared. When the council were voting in favour of the installation, an alderman made an amendment that proposed that Clara Evans be included on the memorial tablet. It is believed this makes her the first woman in Britain to be included on a war memorial tablet alongside serving male soliders.