Elise Sandes

Elise Sandes (1851 – August 1934) was the founder of a welfare movement for soldiers that bears her name and still survives today. She was an evangelical Christian and philanthropist and her concern for a young soldier in Tralee in the late 1860s led her to set up a centre for soldiers' recreation and general welfare. By 1913 there were thirty-one such 'soldiers' homes' all situated in the vicinity of various army barracks; twenty-two were in Ireland and the rest in British India. It is widely regarded that Sandes Homes for Soldiers were very well run and filled a real need among young soldiers, often far from their families who were made to feel at home and not faced with the cold commercial atmosphere of the barracks canteen. Sandes believed that a good feminine influence met a real need where young soldiers were concerned, and the 'homes' were the only place where some of the young recruits could receive anything approaching motherly care.^[1]

Only three Sandes homes remained open in the Irish Free State after 1921, but there were still 20 homes in total in the late 1920s, most of them in India. In recognition of her work as a humanitarian and her dedication to the soldiers' general well-being Elise Sandes is one of only two civilian women to be buried with full military honours – the other being her successor Eva Maguire.