Francesca Wilson

Overview

Francesca Wilson born Newcastle-on-Tyne, England January 1, 1888 (d. 1981). Quaker relief worker; offered aid to Belgian children in England, 1914; France, 1916; Serbs in Corsica, 1917, and Tunisia, 1918; Serbia, 1919. Fed Austrian children, 1919; famine relief to Russia, 1922; children in Spanish Civil War, 1937-38; Spanish in France, 1939; Polish refugees in Hungary, 1940. Assisted UNRRA in postwar Germany.

Quotations

“How important every peasant and every starving child to the Sisters who nursed and fed then! Perhaps it is necessary to have this in war-time to redress the balance a little and to remind us that in the end delicate things outlast the coarse, that love is stronger than the waters that try to quench it and a child’s laughter is still heard when the roar of battle subsides.” (In the Margins of Chaos, 1945, p. 291; photo quakerstrongrooms.org)