Some 40 years before the legendary Florence Nightingale led her party of nurses to help the soldiers of the Crimea, Ann Winzer was nursing the soldiers at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 as the inscription on her gravestone in the churchyard at Piddlehinton, Dorset records.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN
THE BELOVED WIFE OF
JAMES WINZER
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
NOVEMBER 28th 1873
AGED 82 YEARS.
———–
She was a waterloo heroine who assisted at that famous battle AD.1815 by aiding & assisting the sick and wounded she endured many hardships having followed the British army from Brussels to Paris. From Paris to Dunney returned to England & from thence to the rock of Gibraltar where she remained 4 years. She afterwards resided in this parish where she received a pension through the instrumentality of Colonel Astell with that of many other officers by whose kindness this stone is raised as a tribute of respect to a long life spent in true and faithful service.
Ann Keats was baptised in St George’s Church in Fordington, Dorset on 28th January 1795 and she was married there on 1st April 1811 to James Winzer aslo from Fordington. James was a soldier in one of the Light Dragoon Regimentss and Ann travelled with her husband’s Regiment to Brussels, where Wellington defeated Napoleon on 18 Jun 1815. When Ann died on 28th November 1873 Colonel Astell and other officers wanted to pay tribute to her memory so they paid for and had erected the impressive gravestone, which now stands in St Mary’s churchyard at Piddlehinton. James Winzer lived another 18 months and was buried beside her on 12 May 1875.
Phillip Mallett said,
April 18, 2012 at 2:41 am
I’m writing this message in my role as editor of the Hardy Society Journal. Thomas Hardy had a life-long fascination with the Napoleonic Wars; he grew up in Bockhampton, attended school in Dorchester, and had close connections with the Revd Henry Moule and his family in Fordington. He was in Bockhampton in November 1873, when Ann Winzer was buried. Yet neither I nor so far as I know any other Hardy scholar knows of any connection between Ann and Hardy, or any meeting between them, or any knowledge of her in any of his work. This seems extraordinary, given his interest and her celebrity. Can anyone shed any light on this, or find any evidence that Hardy knew or knew of Ann Winzer?