Nurse Flora MacLean of Balevullin
Photograph of Nurse Flora MacLean of Balevullin.
Courtesy of Mrs Flora MacKinnon
Flora MacLean of Balevullin was a nurse in Glasgow at the beginning of the 20th century. While working with children in the city she contracted tuberculosis. Her career finished, she left the pollution of the city for the sunshine and fresh air of her native island.
At the back of her thatched house in Balevullin she set up a tent where she lived much of the year. Her house was one of the few on Tiree with a back door which faces west, the direction of the prevailing wind. Most Tiree houses, until recently, have been built ‘back to the wind, face to the sun’.
She died in 1918 and is buried at Soroby. Her niece, Flora MacKinnon, also lives in Balevullin and is one of the island’s district nurses.
Black and white photograph of nurse Flora MacLean of Balevullin.
Nurse Flora MacLean of Balevullin who died in the 1920s, an aunt of nurse Flora MacKinnon of Balevullin.