1. Ada Merrett Frances Cole was a nurse, animal welfare activist and founder of the International League Against the Export of Horses for Butchery, later renamed the International League for the Protection of Horses, now known as World Horse Welfare.
Ada Cole was largely responsible for making the transport of horses for slaughter more humane and for improving horse abattoirs.
Ada Cole was decorated for her actions while nursing in Belgium in World War One.
Ada Cole was a daughter of Louisa Henrietta and Edward Cole, an eloped couple, and was one of ten children, of whom only five survived infancy.
Ada Cole was educated at home by her mother and a relative, Mrs Merrett, who acted as governess.
From 1883, Ada Cole worked as a nurse at the thirty-year-old London Fever Hospital near King's Cross.
In 1886, both sisters became Roman Catholics, Ada Cole taking the name of St Francis of Assisi as her baptismal name.
In 1906, Ada Cole published, with Scientific Press, a booklet on nursing, called Lectures on home nursing for the poor.
In 1910, Ada Cole's health deteriorated and she was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis.
Ada Cole gave up nursing temporarily and moved to Cley-next-the-Sea, on the North Norfolk Coast, in order to rest and get well.
In 1911, somewhat recovered, Ada Cole went to visit her younger sister, now the mother of a convent in Antwerp.
One day, while passing the docks with her sister, Ada Cole saw lines of horses who, ill and exhausted at the end of their working lives, had been sent from Britain to be disposed of in overseas abattoirs.
Ada Cole did not object to the eating of horses or their slaughter for meat per se but wanted more humane conditions for their transport to slaughterhouses.
Ada Cole researched the situation, working with the RSPCA and the Brussels Society for the Protection of Animals, watching and recording the journeys of horses and mules, often without access to food or water.
Ada Cole contributed to newspapers, gave public talks and was joined by others in sympathy with her actions and ideals.
Ada Cole worked as a Red Cross nurse treating German and allied soldiers.
Ada Cole helped allied soldiers to escape back to their homes via underground networks that included her sister's convent.
Ada Cole was arrested on August 3,1918, and held in the Antwerp Military Prison which was known, jokingly, as the Patriots' Hotel.
Ada Cole had kept a diary throughout the war, hiding the texts under the floorboards at the convent.
Ada Cole continued to work with help from, for example, the RSPCA, the Belgian SPCA, and Lord Mark Lambourne, to pressure the Minister of Agriculture to improve inspections and slaughter conditions in France and Belgium.
Ada Cole's aim was to stop the export of horses completely as it was hard to verify that the slaughter techniques in continental abattoirs were humane.
In 1928, Ada Cole founded the International League for the Protection of Horses.
Ada Cole campaigned against the exportation of worn-out horses; work which was not sanctioned by the RSPCA Council.
Ada Cole intended to get reinstated in the RSPCA as an organizer for the prevention of traffic in old horses.
Ada Cole sent requisition papers, signed by over 250 RSPCA members to their headquarters in February 1927.
Ada Cole's remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, among those president were Sir Robert Gower of the RSPCA and De Vere Summers.