Worsley (nee Marriott), Evelyn “Effie” (1888-  )

Evelyn trained as a nurse in Leicester, England, and worked as a midwife in the slums of Glasgow.  She came to Canada and married 70-year-old Colonel George Worsley in Sandwick, near Courtenay in 1938.  After her husband’s death a decade later, she lived in a cottage at Gordon Head.

The high point of her nursing career was becoming nurse-in-charge of the leprosarium on Bentinck Island, nine miles south of Victoria, from 1951 until its closure in 1956.  Here patients with Hansen’s disease received the sulfa drugs and humane treatment that allowed most to eventually return to their community.

Contents of Biographical File

  1. Biographical Information Profile
  2. Correspondence concerning file, 2006, 2011
  3. Watts, Ethelinda B. “Lucky Lepers”, April 1954.
  4.   Newspaper articles on Bentinck Island leper colony, 1956-1973.
  5. Two samples of printing by Worsley’s patient.
  6. Extracts from a letter by a paid letter writer for “Kam” on his return to Calcutta from Bentinck Island in 1954.
  7. Newspaper clippings on Worsley’s marriage and death.
  8. Four photographs of Bentinck Island, with descriptions.
  9. Photocopied photographs of Worsley.