Flora Masson

Flora Masson (1856 – 1937) was a Scottish-born nurse, suffragist, writer and editor.

Flora Masson was born in Edinburgh. She was first of three daughters of professor David Masson and suffrage campaigner Emily Rosaline Orme. Her father was chair of the English department at the University of Edinburgh. Her younger brother was a scientist, David Orme Masson, and her younger sister was a suffragist and writer, Rosaline Masson. Their aunt, Eliza Orme, was the first woman to earn a law degree in England.

Because of her parents' social connections, Masson met Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Coventry Patmore and James Barrie in her youth, and heard Charles Dickens read from Oliver Twist, among other acquaintances with notables of the nineteenth century.

Flora Masson trained as a nurse at St. Thomas's Hospital, London.

Nursing

Masson worked at the Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and the Eastern Fever Hospital, Homerton (now Homerton University Hospital) as a matron. She was matron of the Red Cross hospital near Rosewell during World War I. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross of the 1st class "in recognition of valuable services under 'The British Red Cross Society', or 'Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England', rendered in connection with the war". Masson was a close friend of Florence Nightingale.

Suffrage

Masson was active in the women's suffrage movement with her mother and sister. She joined the Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society (LEDS) in 1881. The LEDS hosted many discussions and lectures on various feminist topics, including suffrage, marriage, and religion.

Writing

Masson edited two of her father's books, Memories of London in the 'Forties (1908) and Memories of Two Cities (1911). She also contributed to a book by her sister, I Can Remember Robert Louis Stevenson (1923). Books written by Flora Masson included the following titles:

• Florence Nightingale, O.M. By one who knew her (1910)
• The Brontes (1912)
• Charles Lamb (1913)
• Robert Boyle, a biography (1914)
• Victorians All (1931)
• The Heart Is Highland (1932)

Her Victorians All, about the notable people Masson met in her youth, was described as "a pleasant, rather sad little book" in The Guardian; "this is not so much a book of good stories as about real happenings," the review concluded.

Masson lived with her sister Rosaline. She died in 1937, in Edinburgh.