Florence Simpson

Who was Florence Simpson?

Dame Florence Edith Victoria Simpson, DBE, née Way, later Leach, was the senior female British army officer during World War I and Controller in Chief, later President, Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps.

The daughter of Colonel Wilfred FitzAlan Way and his wife, Henrietta Mary, she married firstly on 3 December 1895, Captain Henry Edmund Burleigh Leach. They divorced in 1920. She married secondly, Ernest Percy Simpson, a widower with two daughters in 1922. There were no children from either marriage. Her second husband died in 1925.