Louisa Watson Peat

Louisa Watson Peat, born Louisa Watson Small, (1883–1953) was an Irish-born writer and lecturer.

Life and work

Born in Keady, County Armagh, Ireland, Louisa Peat attending Queens College in Belfast, and furthermore attended the University of London.

After graduation she worked in London, first for the Daily Chronicle and later for Herbert N. Casson, managing the London office. The British Government employed Miss Small as an efficiency lecturer in 1915. Attempting to locate her cousin, John O'Donnell Watson, who was serving in a Canadian Battalion from Alberta, at the front during World War I, Miss Small had advertised looking for news and received many responses, including a letter from a Canadian soldier, Harold R. Peat, who had served with the Third (Canadian) Battalion. Peat, was then recuperating from action at Ypres, at the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich. Eventually they became a couple and married. Together, they wrote Private Peat,, a best-selling account of a soldier under fire during the Great War. Her memoir of this period Mrs. Private Peat was published in 1918.