Emily de Burgh Daly

Emily Lucy de Burgh Daly (7 August 1859 – 13 November 1935) was an Irish nurse, writer, and traveller.
Life.
Emily de Burgh Daly was born Emily Lucy French on 7 August 1859 at the family home at Clooneyquin, County Roscommon. She was the fourth daughter of the nine children of Christopher French and Susan Emma French (née Percy). One of her older brothers was the humorist and songwriter Percy French. She was educated privately at home, with the children producing their own theatricals and family magazines.
Daly left home in 1888, training as a nurse at the Mildmay Hospital, Bethnal Green, London. After this she travelled to Ningbo, China, nursing and going on to take charge of a hospital for women. During her 25 years in China, she attempted to learn the language but never mastered it. When she married Charles de Burgh Daly in October 1890, she gave up nursing. Charles was the port doctor for Ningbo and director of the Church Missionary Society Hospital. The couple had at least two sons, Ulick and Arthur Charles, and one daughter, Lucy. Arthur and Ulick both served with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and Lucy with the Voluntary Aid Detachment in Dublin during World War I.
The family moved to Newchwang, southern Manchuria in 1893, where they took in refugees from the Sino-Japanese war in 1894. During this time, Daly travelled around China extensively, witnessing the run up to the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War, escaping the country with her children during both of those conflicts. Her husband was recalled to Ireland in 1910 to aid in the treatment of those suffering from the pneumonic plague.
In 1912 she published her memoirs, "An Irishwoman in China", in which she described the customs and people of China, and the lifestyle of Europeans living there. She edited two collections of her brother's work: "Chronicles and poems of Percy French" (1922) and "Prose, poems and parodies of Percy French" (1925). She died at Priory Lodge, Blackrock, County Dublin on 13 November 1935.