Kate Marsden (1859–1931)

Kate Marsden was born in Edmonton, a town in North London, England, one of eight children of J.D. Marsden, a solicitor, and his wife Sophie Matilda Wellsted. Most of her siblings died in childhood of tuberculosis. Kate was educated at a boarding school, but following her father's death in 1873, she was reduced to poverty. At age 16, in 1876-1877, she trained as a nurse at Tottenham Hospital, and then volunteered with the Red Cross to serve as a nurse in the Russo-Turkish War.

On her return from Bulgaria, she was named Sister-in-Charge at Woolton Convalescent Home. In 1884, she went to New Zealand with her mother to help care for her sister Annie, who was dying of tuberculosis. They arrived in January 1885, but Annie died within a week. Kate and her mother stayed in New Zealand for several years while Kate worked as Lady Superintendent of Wellington Hospital.

After her return to the UK in 1889, she was invited to travel to Russia to receive an award for her work during the war. There she obtained support from the Empress Maria Fedorovna for a trip to Siberia to search for an herbal cure for leprosy. The trip was arduous, but Kate persevered, visiting remote leper colonies in the region and establing a hospice and treatment center near the Yakut settlement in Vilyuisk. She returned to England and helped to found Bexhill Museum. She went on a lecture tour and was invited to meet Queen Victoria. Kate's finances and her motives for the Siberian journey came under scrutiny. However, she was one of the first women elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892 and published her experiences in On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers (1893) and My Mission to Siberia: A Vindication (1921).