Chronology

Nov. 27, 1873	Ellen Newbold La Motte is born in Louisville, Kentucky. She is educated by governesses and attends a private girls’ school in Virginia.
1890	Moves to Wilmington, Delaware, to live in the home of her cousin Alfred I. duPont, a wealthy industrialist, and attends a finishing school in Philadelphia.
1899	Enters the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses in Baltimore, Maryland.
1902	Graduates from Johns Hopkins and then works as a nurse in the United States and Italy; begins to publish essays related to public health.
1905	Returns to Baltimore to work as a tuberculosis field nurse and publishes the first of many essays about the treatment of tuberculosis.
1910	Becomes director of the Tuberculosis Division of the Baltimore Board of Health and begins to play a prominent role in the city’s suffrage movement.
June 1913	Leaves Baltimore to participate in England’s militant suffrage movement, which she reports on for the Baltimore Sun.
Sept. 1913	Moves to Paris and writes her first book, The Tuberculosis Nurse: Her Function and Her Qualifications.
May 1914	Returns to London and prepares The Tuberculosis Nurse for publication.
June 28, 1914	Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria assassinated in Sarajevo by a radical Bosnian-Serb, sparking World War I.
Aug. 1, 1914	La Motte departs England to return to America.
Aug. 3–4, 1914	Germany declares war on France and invades neutral Belgium. The United States declares its neutrality.
Oct. 1914	La Motte travels to France to volunteer as a war nurse.
Oct. 19–Nov. 22, 1914	First Battle of Ypres. Germany launches a major attack along the Western Front in northwestern Belgium.
Nov. 1914	La Motte works for several weeks as a volunteer nurse in a large military hospital called the American Ambulance of Paris.
Winter 1914–1915	Begins an enduring relationship with Emily Crane Chadbourne, an heiress and art collector from Chicago.
April 22–May 25, 1915	Second Battle of Ypres. German forces launch another offensive and use chlorine poison gas for the first time.
June 1915	La Motte leaves Paris to work at a new French military field hospital in Belgium, located roughly ten miles from Ypres. While en route, she is caught in the French city of Dunkirk when it comes under German shellfire.
July 1915	Her essay “An American Nurse in Paris” is published in Survey.
July–Aug. 1915	Fighting continues in the Ypres sector, with heavy casualties and little movement of the frontlines.
Oct. 1915	La Motte returns to Paris and vacations with Chadbourne in the South of France.
Nov. 1915	Her essay “Under Shell-Fire at Dunkirk” is published in the Atlantic Monthly.
Dec. 1915	Completes “Heroes” and “La Patrie Reconnaissante,” the first two stories in The Backwash of War.
Jan. 1916	Returns to the field hospital, where she remains from mid-January to mid-February.
Feb.–April 1916	German diversionary attacks strike Allied forces in the area of the Ypres Salient.
March 1916	La Motte departs with Chadbourne on a vacation in Spain and then completes additional stories for The Backwash of War in Paris.
May 1916	Returns to the field hospital and takes a terrifying “joy ride” near the frontlines at Ypres.
June 1916	Leaves the field hospital for a final time and returns to Paris, where she finishes The Backwash of War.
July 1916	Travels to the United States with Chadbourne.
Aug. 1916	Her story “Heroes” is published in the Atlantic Monthly.
Aug. 1916	Embarks with Chadbourne on a nearly yearlong trip to Asia, during which La Motte investigates the devastating impact of the international opium trade.
Sept. 1916	The Backwash of War is published in New York and London by G. P. Putnam’s Sons and immediately suppressed in England and France.
Oct. 1916	Her essay “A Joy Ride” is published in the Atlantic Monthly.
April 1917	America officially enters World War I.
Aug. 1917	La Motte and Chadbourne return to America.
Aug. 1918	The Backwash of War is censored by the US postmaster general and withdrawn by its publisher.
Nov. 11, 1918	World War I ends.
1919	The Backwash of War is re-released in England and America, and La Motte publishes two new books, Peking Dust and Civilization: Tales of the Orient.
1920	La Motte moves to London, where, for the following decade, she spearheads an international anti-opium campaign, publishing multiple books and numerous essays on the topic.
1931	Moves with Chadbourne back to the United States, during the Great Depression.
1934	The Backwash of War is republished in a new edition, with an updated introduction and an additional story, “Esmeralda.”
1935	La Motte retires from writing and advocacy work.
March 2, 1961	La Motte dies in Washington, DC.