Inès de Bourgoing, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetInès de Bourgoing
French nurse (1862-1953)
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: 8th arrondissement of Paris, Île-de-France, France
About Inès de Bourgoing
- Inès-Marie de Bourgoing, also Inès Fortoul, Inès Lyautey, (5 January 1862 – 9 February 1953) was a pioneering French nurse who served as president of the French Red Cross and established Red Cross nursing in Morocco.
- In recognition of her extensive social work, she became the first woman to be honoured with the rank of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour.
- She was also decorated as a Grand Officer of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite in recognition of her work in Morocco. Born into the nobility, de Bourgoing was educated at court and married an artillery officer, Joseph Fortoul.
- Widowed, after raising her children, de Bourgoing chose the field of nursing as a means of helping alleviate poverty and participated in the first formal nursing classes offered in Paris.
- After she began working as a nurse, she went abroad with the Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires, a forerunner of the French Red Cross, to work in North Africa.
- In 1907, she joined the SSBM and that same year, travelled to Morocco, where she established an infirmary in Casablanca.
- Fifteen months later, she assisted in disaster relief following an earthquake in Sicily. After her second marriage in 1909 with Hubert Lyautey, who would become the first resident-general in Morocco, de Bourgoing spent the rest of her life dividing her time between France and Morocco, establishing hospitals, maternity clinics and child care centres in both countries.
- She served as a hospital administrator in France, during both World War I and World War II, and opened a convalescent centre for troops in Salé, as well as a retirement home near La Balme-les-Grottes for the French Foreign Legion.
- After serving as head of the Ladies Committee of the SSBM (1926–1939), when the three precursor organisations came together as the Red Cross in 1940, she became Vice President of the Central Committee of the Ladies of the French Red Cross and later Director General of the organisation.
- Working into her 80s, de Bourgoing remained active until her death in Morocco in 1953.
- Her remains were later repatriated to France.
Read more at Wikipedia