Emma Maria Pearson (1828–1893), the daughter of Captain Charles Pearson, RN, of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, was a writer and one of the first British women to serve as a nurse for the Red Cross. Both the French and Germans awarded medals to her for running ambulances (as field hospitals were then called) during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. She also gained the Gold Cross of the Order of the Takova for work in the Serbo-Turkish war, the prelude to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78).