Jean was born in Pahiatua in 1891 to John Drysdale Matheson and Mary Matheson née Gilmour, who were both from Scotland. Her birth name was Jane, but seems to have been recorded officially as Jean ever since.
She trained as a nurse for three years at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, qualifying in 1915. The following year she joined the New Zealand Army Nursing Service and in early 1917 travelled to England on the troopship Athenic with the 20th Reinforcements. She served at a New Zealand Stationary Hospital in France and the New Zealand General Hospital in Walton-on-Thames in England.
She returned to New Zealand on the hospital ship Marama in 1919 and left the army the following year. Jean married Montague Shaw in 1922 but they divorced in 1949. She died in Auckland in 1975.
Nurses on the troopship Athenic, the same sailing as Jean Matheson took. We don’t know whether she is in this photo.