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Elizabeth Fearn (nee Bramwell) was born in Perth, Scotland in 1857. Her mother was Eleanor Oliver and her father was James Paton Bramwell. Her father and brother, Jonathan Milne Bramwell, both doctors in Scotland, were well known for using hypnosis in surgery. Elizabeth trained as a nurse at the Queen Victoria Hospital in Southampton, England.
While on a nursing expedition to the Egyptian Sudan, she fell in love with a patient and soldier in the Grenadier Guards named Stephen Douglas Fearn. They married the day after he was discharged from duty in London in 1885. She was 28 and he was 25. They moved to Victoria, B.C., soon after their marriage. Their children were Alistair Douglas (1888 - ), Leslie Bennett (1890 - 1972) and Oliver (1893 - ). Elizabeth and Stephen divorced and she returned to Scotland with her three children to obtain her obstetrics diploma. Elizabeth was an active suffragette and changed her pen name frequently to get published.
It is believed that Elizabeth Fearn was the first woman to pre-empt land in BC (on the Townline Rd.). She later moved to Clearbrook and died in 1940.

See also: nurses