Following her tour of duty at Utrecht in September 1879, Nurse Wells was sent via Rorke's Drift to Durban for repatriation home to the UK. Whilst at Rorke's Drift she took time to visit Isandlwana, and was probably the very first lady civilian to do so.
She collected a variety of relics, including Zulu spearheads and sticks; she also collected as souvenirs some of the pieces of paper that had been caught in bushes or among the rocky outcrops that studded the area. Some of the papers were especially poignant, such as a frontispiece from Dickens' Pickwick Papers and part of a letter signed ‘From your own Madgie’ and still legible despite being exposed to sun and rain for nearly ten months. She also picked up two pages of Romans and Corinthians torn from a pocket Bible. She found a page ripped from a soldier's pay-book which had belonged to Private Thomas Vedler of ‘C’ Company 2/24th Regiment, who had perished along with Captain Younghusband.
A full biographical account can be found in Sister Janet, Best, B., Pen & Sword Books, 2004.