Dora Beatrice Derham, "Dolly", 1890-1966, was the eldest of four children. A policeman's daughter, she started work at the Berrywood Asylum as a kitchen assistant before becoming a nurse. She remained when it became a War Hospital and received general medical training.
She started collecting contributions from soldiers to her autograph book in July 1916; her younger brother Dennis Victor Derham was Private 23551 with the Northamptonshire Regiment and was killed on 9/9/1916. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
It is not known where Dolly got her book from, but an inscription indicates it was a present from France, perhaps from her brother or from one of her patients.
She resumed her mental health nursing career after the war, remaining at what became St Crispins Hospital and becoming Sister of Connolly Lodge, a rehabilitation ward, until her eventual and apparently reluctant retirement in 1961, having been mentioned in Despatches for distinguished service and devotion to duty in 1917, and awarded the British Empire Medal in the 1955 Birthday Honours. She never married and died in 1966 in Middlesex House, Pitsford, Northamptonshire, which was then a small geriatric hospital.