Rank unknown Janet Morison Ayre

Rank unknown (British Army).

Nee Miller

Janet Morison (Miller) Ayre Murray (1891-1946), VAD, suffragist, was born in St. John's on 18 November 1891, the youngest child of Lewis Holdene and Mary Peter (Morison) Miller. She had a brother, Andrew and a sister, Agnes. Murray married twice, first to Eric Ayre of St. John's at St. Giles in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 19 June 1915 (no children), and later Andrew Hamilton Murray of St. John's on 30 April 1924. They had one daughter Gertrude. Murray died in St. John's on 5 April 1946.

Murray attended Bishop Spencer College, St. John's. She won the Lord Bishop's Scripture prize and was runner up for the Jubilee Scholarship. In 1913 she became a law student in the firm of her uncle, Donald Morison. When World War I broke out, she moved with her mother to Scotland. There Murray married Eric Ayre, St. John's, who was serving as an officer with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (RNR). He was killed in action a year later.

Eric's young bride, Janet Miller, also comes to mind. She gave up the law studies she had fought so hard to have the right to pursue in order to travel to England in 1915 to be with her fiance. They were married in Edinburgh on June 19, 1915. After his death, she stayed in England as a member of the Volunteer Aid Detachment for the remainder of the war.

Together with her mother and her mother-in-law, Gertrude Ayre, Murray moved to the south of England. She served with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) of the British Red Cross in the 1st Berkshire Association and also trained as an ambulance driver. After the war, they returned to Newfoundland. Murray became active in the woman suffrage movement and the Great War Veteran's Association (GWVA).
Murray's second husband was Andrew H. Murray, a prominent St. John's businessman and entrepreneur. He founded A.H. Murray & Co., the predecessor of Murray Industrial Ltd.