She was an unmarried, 46 year-old nurse, who had been invalided home from South Africa, reportedly suffering from enteric fever, although possibly for other reasons. After staying with her brother, Frederick Holland, in Burton, she left on 29th May 1901, and went to work at Netley Hospital, near Southampton. On Saturday 1st June, she suddenly resigned her post and left, going to stay at a Portsmouth hotel, from where she jumped out of a window and died on Thursday morning, 6th June.
A note left in her room read "£15 11s. in money. All for my sister, Miss E. Holland, 172, Station-street, Burton-on-Trent," but it isn't clear from that whether the Miss E. Holland mentioned was her sister or Eliza herself signing it off.
In South Africa, she was a Superintendent in the Army Nursing Service, and had enlisted on 28th October, 1897. Travelled from England to Cape Town in March 1900, was at the 8th General Hospital, Bloemfontein, in 1900, then went to Cape Town in December 1900, and was invalided back to England, on January 17th, 1901.
I'd like to know where she was buried - Portsmouth or Burton? Any other information about her would also be welcome. I did try to find her birth registration, but there are a number of potential Eliza Hollands, and none of them from the Burton area, that I could see. She may possibly have been Eliza Elizabeth Holland, birth registered in Plymouth in the September quarter of 1854 (mother's maiden name was Nute).
