Pearson, Joan Daphne Mary (Daphne)   (1911 - 2000)

Born on 25 May 1911 at Christchurch, near Bournemouth (UK); died on 25 July 2000 in Melbourne, (Aust.) aged 89.

Best known as a war hero, one of only thirteen female recipients of the George Cross medal, and the first woman to be decorated for gallantry in the Second World War.

After leaving St Brandon's School, (Bristol), she worked as a photographer and photographic assistant, with her own studio, before giving it up because of ill health. She then had a variety of jobs while learning to fly in her spare time.

She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a medical orderly shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

After a plane crash in 1940, Corporal Pearson entered the burning fuselage, released the pilot from his harness and removed him from the immediate area around the aircraft. After she was 27 metres (30 yards) from the aircraft, a bomb exploded. She flung herself on top of the pilot to protect him. After medical staff had removed the pilot, she went back to the plane to look for the fourth crew member, the radio operator. She found him dead.

After demobilisation in 1946, Pearson became the assistant governor of a women's Borstal. She later worked at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and owned a shop in Kew, selling gardening equipment, produce and flowers.

Pearson came to Australia, in 1959, on the inaugural flight of the Comet IV from Heathrow to Darwin.
She immediately decided to emigrate there. She worked as a horticulturist, first with the Department of Agriculture in Victoria and from 1968 to 1976 the Commonwealth Department of Transport.

Her plant collections in the Melbourne Herbarium date from December 1959 to October 1973.

Pearson died on 25 July 2000, aged 89, in Melbourne, Australia.


Australian Plants: Collectors and Illustrators
1780s-1980s
By J.H. Willis , D. Pearson, M.T. Davis and J.W. Green (1986).

This list of collectors and illustrators of Australian plants was the working base of a projected catalogue of biographies intended to be published separately. It morphed into this 'Collectors and Illustrators' CHAH website.

The original ms. catalogue was commenced by the late Mervyn Davis in 1955 during her service on the staff at the National Herbarium, Melbourne. Subsequently much material was added from the researches of J.H. Willis and more recent contributors.

The assistance of a Commonwealth ABRS grant to Daphne Pearson was gratefully acknowledged in the preface.

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.womenaustralia.info/entries/pearson-joan-daphne-mary/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Pearson
Portrait Photo: not dated, Shuttercock website.

Collecting localities for 'Pearson, J.D.M.' from AVH (2024)

Data from 283 specimens