Elizabeth Ann Porter Head

Elizabeth Ann Porter Head (1850–1936), widely known as Bessie Porter Head, was an Irish-born evangelical Anglican missionary worker, speaker, devotional writer, and hymn author. Born in Belfast, she was the youngest daughter of Tobias Porter. Little is documented about her early years, but by 1894 she was serving as secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association in Swansea, Wales.

From 1897 to 1907 Porter worked with the South Africa General Mission, serving principally in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, and Johannesburg and helping to establish YWCA branches. In 1906–1907 she toured North America with mission leaders. She married Albert Alfred Head, chairman of the mission, on December 17, 1907, and thereafter used the name Bessie Porter Head. The couple remained active in the South Africa General Mission and in the Keswick Convention, the evangelical renewal movement with which the mission was closely associated.

Head became a frequent speaker and contributed prose and verse to mission and Keswick publications. Her collection Heavenly Places, & Other Messages appeared in 1920 and included the hymn later known as “O Breath of Life.” Her writing is marked by prayer for spiritual renewal, dependence on the Holy Spirit, repentance, and missionary service. She continued supporting evangelical mission and Keswick work after her marriage and, following her husband's death in 1928, lived at the mission's Wimbledon house. She died in Wimbledon, Surrey, on June 28, 1936.