Lettice Floyd (Reproduced with permission of Museum of London)
“Lettice Floyd, whose ancestry includes the fiery reformer John Knox, has been a hospital nurse. She feels strongly that women should have a voice in legislation on behalf of women, especially of young mothers and children, and her experience has been of peculiar value in enforcing this view on many occasions.”[i]
This was a description of Lettice Annie Floyd published in Votes for Women on the 15th October 1908, two days after she had been arrested along with 23 other women and 13 men for their attempted “rush” on the House of Commons to demand the vote for women. At her trial at Bow Street Police Court, Floyd was accused of attempting to push through a cordon of police in Bridge Street; she had been told to go back but persisted in trying to force her way towards the Commons. Refusing to provide sureties she was sentenced to a month in Holloway Prison. Lettice was to become a full-time active paid organiser for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and form a romantic relationship with fellow suffragette, Annie Williams. Further WSPU activity led to further arrest and force-feeding.
Floyd has become better known for her suffragette campaigning and her relationship with Williams, than her career as a trained nurse. In 1921, when she was staying at Miss Kemp’s Women’s Hostel in St Pancras, she describes herself as Hospital Nurse Retired; with her family wealth she could have described herself as “independent” or “property owner”, but she was clearly proud to identify with the profession for which she had trained.[ii]
While much has been written about Floyd’s suffrage activities, the intention of this article is to focus on her career as a nurse. My research looks more closely at this aspect of her life, as well as the family and broader colleague connections which influenced her future campaigning on women’s issues.
Early Life
Floyd was born in Berkswell, near Coventry in 1865, the daughter of William Floyd, a farmer and landowner who was nearly fifty when he married her mother, Alison Clapperton. Alison who was one of 12 siblings, was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of a successful merchant.[iii] Her elder sister, Eliza Clapperton had married many years earlier into the family of Rotherham, long established and successful watchmakers and engineers of Coventry.[iv] Lettice had two brothers and a sister, none of whom married. She had a privileged life at Beechwood House in Berkswell; her early education was under the watchful eye of a governess, Frances Mary Adkins, who was to remain a life-long servant and friend of the family and clearly someone who meant a great deal to Lettice. Her father died in 1879 leaving both his daughters £3000.[v] Following his death Lettice was sent to a girls’ boarding school run by the Roscoe Jones family near Liverpool which was large enough to include governesses who taught German and French.
Influences
At the age of twenty Floyd was unclear about the direction of her life should take despite several possible role models in her wider family. Her cousin, Edith Anna Coombs studied literature at Somerville Hall in Oxford and took a teaching post at Edgbaston High School for Girls.[vi] Floyd’s Aunt, Sophia Balgarnie, was also aunt to Florence Balgarnie (1856-1928) who had been elected to the Scarborough School Board in 1883 and became the secretary of the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage and later the British Women’s Temperance Association.[vii] Women’s Suffrage was also the cause of Lettice’s aunt, Jane Hume Clapperton (1832-1914) who had been an early member of the Edinburgh Women’s Suffrage Society and in 1885 had published Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of Happiness.[viii] Lettice’s Canadian born cousin, Margaret Ann Clapperton, became a teacher at the St George’s Training College in Edinburgh. Inspired by what she learnt on a study trip to America in 1893 she became a co-founder of the Child Study Society in 1894, acting as general secretary.[ix]
Lettice’s brother William died aged 24 in 1886, leaving her and her sister Mary to care for their mother; their brother George was away at Oxford University. Yet she did not want ‘to live an idle life.’[x] Her uncle, John Clapperton had been active in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children, serving as director and sometime chairman. Her Edinburgh aunts had also been supporters and this may have led her to consider sick children’s nursing. At some point she resolved to undertake nurse training and in March 1891 she enrolled as a Lady Probationer for a two-year training at the Nottingham Children’s Hospital.[xi]
Training at Nottingham Free Hospital for Sick Children
The Nottingham Free Hospital for Sick Children was founded in 1869 in Russell House, Postern Street. By 1874 it still only had six beds and admitted about 60 patients over the year. Twenty years later there were 32 cots but overcrowding was a problem and the expanding hospital required a Lady Superintendent, two sisters and seven nurses.
As with other hospitals who employed Lady Probationers, Floyd paid an entry fee of £5 and a charge of a Guinea a week for the length of training. Irreverent medical students were known to refer to these paying probationers as “guinea pigs.”[xii] Florence Nightingale had initially been unsure about Lady Probationers at the Nightingale School but by 1867 this had been recognised as a route into training and as they did not receive a salary, their fees made up a significant contribution to the hospital finances. In fact, the Children’s Hospital depended on the use of paying probationers and in their annual report in 1893 the management committee were proud to report that fees from probationer nurses had been £33 13s. Expenditure on nurses’ salaries had been £40 so the actual cost of nursing only amounted to £7.
In 1891 when she began her training, Floyd would have been 26. In general hospitals nurses were usually accepted from the ages of 23-35, however, it was noted that Children’s Hospitals were more inclined to waiver the age restriction for fee paying probationers and probationers could start as young as 20.[xiii] Candidates had to produce a medical certificate and have a personal interview with the Lady Superintendent.
Nursing at the Nottingham Free Hospital for Sick Children
Miss Lilian Parmiter became Lady Superintendent of the Nottingham Free Hospital for Sick Children when Lettice joined the staff. Parmiter had trained at the Hospital from 1885-1887, she then completed three-month placements at The London Hospital, and St Saviour’s Infirmary in Dulwich before returning to the Children’s Hospital in 1889. Her Head Nurse, Gertrude Withers, had similarly trained at the Children’s Hospital from 1887 to 1888 and then undertook a short placement at the Hospital for Women, Soho in 1890. She became Head Nurse in 1891. Both women were Members of the Royal British Nurses’ Association and like Floyd, both Withers and Parmiter had brothers who had been at Oxford.[xiv]
Infant mortality in Nottingham was very high. In 1893, in a paper presented to the Statistical Society entitled “On the Perils and Protection of Infant Life”, Dr Jones of Liverpool noted that the chief causes of excessive mortality were due to “poverty, downright ignorance and folly in feeding, causes which are gradually remediable by the spread of education”. In the same debate it was noted that the rate of infant mortality was always highest in towns where the factories give most employment to women. The inference that female employment was to blame was hotly contested by Millicent Fawcett, the leading suffragist. Jones argued that whilst it was important for women to find employment, there should be more regulation of their labour.[xv]
Infectious diseases were a major issue for both the patients and the staff. There was an isolation ward at the Children’s Hospital, but if the condition became too difficult to manage, they were sent to the Bagthorpe Isolation Hospital. It says something about the financial position of the probationer nurses that Miss Parmiter wrote to their parents to inform that if their daughters had to go to Bagthorpe for treatment as parents of these sick nurses could pay for a private nurse.
When Miss Floyd began her training, there was no systematic programme of learning; probationers learnt by watching staff and asking questions of their colleagues and Miss Parmiter provided some instruction in her private sitting room. There was a library and the hospital subscribed to newspapers.
The hospital had 32 beds as well as a very busy out-patients department and in 1894 there were 9,975 outpatients a 17% increase on the previous year; minor surgery was dealt with in the outpatients. That same year, 377 children had been admitted as in-patients, of whom 84 had required operations. The most common operation after the removal of abscesses, was for cleft lip. A baby’s ability to suckle was vital and if other strategies failed surgery became necessary. Burns and scalds caused by open fires, candles and pans of boiling water were also a common cause of emergency admissions and in that year 28 children died at the hospital.
Whilst Dr Marshall and his colleagues visited the hospital, they were very aware that the nurses were having to manage cases which needed greater input from a doctor and Marshall urged the management committee to appoint a house surgeon. When Miss Margaret Dewar applied for the position in 1896, the all-male committee told her that ‘ladies are not eligible for appointment.’ The minutes of the management meetings provide further insight into how the committee saw the role of female staff such as Miss Parmiter; her first job at each meeting was not to report on the children or staff but to give an account of gifts and donations made to the hospital.
At this time there were no women on the management committee. At the annual general meeting in 1887, it was suggested that ‘part of the management of an institution of that kind should be superintended by ladies…the institution was a sort of home for sick children and therefore ladies ought to help manage it.’ Rev Henry Charles Russell, the Chairman of the Management Committee concurred with this sentiment but for all the time that Floyd nursed at the hospital, bar a token female president, the committee remained exclusively male.[xvi]
Other women who worked at the hospital were volunteers, members of the Old Girls Association of the Nottingham High School for Girls, who came three times a week to read to, and teach the children. This service was greatly valued, giving nursing staff time to concentrate on nursing procedures rather than trying to entertain the children.[xvii]
Why Floyd chose Nottingham over Birmingham Children’s Hospital, which was nearer her home is not clear. Birmingham had purpose-built accommodation for nurses and probationers and a sitting room for when they were off duty. Such luxury was not available in Nottingham. It may be that her cousin Edith Coombs who was teaching in Edgbaston knew Miss Parmiter’s sister, Miss Ada Parmiter, the successful head teacher of the Bath Row Grammar School for Girls in Birmingham, who also lived in Edgbaston. Maybe their brothers knew one another at university.
It may have been that she knew something of the work of the visiting physician to the hospital, Dr Lewis Marshall. Marshall had worked closely with Dr James Goodhart who had written the seminal text on diseases of children.[xviii]
Floyd as a qualified nurse
After two years of training, Floyd finished her probation in March 1893. Not long after another probationer, Lettice Schlesinger joined the hospital. Miss Parmiter was concerned that the training for probationers needed to improve so in 1894 she proposed a new training regime whereby a new probationer would spend three months on practical training before going on to the wards. The programme included methods of cleaning, tidying and disinfecting rooms; bandaging; preparing splints and other surgical apparatus and disinfecting them; the principles of food and simple cooking; elementary physiology and hygiene; the general symptoms of children’s disease and the theory of early education. She also proposed additional probationers. Whilst this programme might not have supported Floyd in her training, it meant that as a charge nurse, she could expect new probationers to be better prepared to work on the wards. Miss Parmiter reported that after a year with the new programme, she felt it had been successful.
There are no extant records of the patients at the hospital during the time that Floyd nursed there but we do know some names. Floyd appears in the 1891 census for the hospital as do the 29 patients, 28 of whom were ten and under. One patient was Daisy Edgworth, was just 8 months old. Whatever her condition she left hospital and was later adopted by a widow Jane Woolley. Daisy went on to marry becoming a mother and grandmother. Alfred Heaps aged 3 also recovered and went on to marry and become a chauffeur in Nottingham. In 1893 Christopher Silver Cass, two years old, was run over by a parcel van and one of his legs was seriously injured. The driver of the van rushed him to the Children’s Hospital and with judicious treatment and nursing he recovered to return home. He became a labourer for the City Council, dying in 1951. There is no known picture of Floyd as a nurse but there are two photographs of the period showing staff and patients.[xix]
In September 1895, Floyd was put in charge of the girls’ ward, but six months later things changed when the head nurse Miss Withers resigned and this led to discussion about salaries of the head nurses and sisters. It was resolved to have a Head Nurse for Out Patients, a Head Nurse for the Boys Ward and to deputise for the Superintendent and a head nurse for the Girls Ward. It is at this time that these head nurses are also referred to as sisters. Floyd was now earning £20 a year and in 1896 she was moved from the girls’ ward to take charge of the extremely busy outpatient department. The sister who ran the boys’ ward received £30 in recognition of her deputising role but Floyd did not put herself forward for this promotion. That same year a former nurse tried to improve conditions for the staff by providing funding for partitions between staff bedrooms and enabling the sisters to have a small sitting room. There were now 8 nurses sleeping in 8 cubicles in the main hospital and two more sleeping on the top floor of the isolation block. The night nurses were provided with chairs.
It was also around this time that her rugby-playing cousin, Arthur Rotherham came to work as an assistant house surgeon at The General Hospital in Nottingham, earning £50 a year, an enhanced amount as the hospital was struggling to recruit to these positions. He did not remain long, returning to London as an asylum doctor.[xx] By November 1897, Floyd’s salary had increased to £25 and she was back on the Girls Ward. Miss Withers returned to run the Out Patient Department.
Clearly Children’s nursing was not for everyone. Henry Burdett noted that ‘very many young women regard nursing from a distance as an easy and pleasant pastime – are in practice utterly unsuited for the calling of a nurse.’[xxi] One such person was one of the probationers, entrusted to Floyd, Catherine Ada Morrish. The daughter of a doctor, she wrote to The Hospital newspaper about the lack of support she had been given, particularly in the Isolation Ward where no table was provided for her to eat her supper. Floyd was indignant. She wrote that she herself had supervised and trained Morrish, making reference to the administration of enemas which clearly Morrish felt was beneath her. Floyd noted, “I frequently worked at isolation, and found it quite possible to live a comfortable, clean and refined life there.”[xxii]
In August 1898, with Floyd’s mother’s health deteriorating, she resigned from the hospital although her mother died within months.[xxiii] Not long after she left the Children’s hospital, Lilian Parmiter, Gertrude Withers, and Lettice Schlesinger also left, so there well have been other issues at the hospital. Parmiter, who was to remain a life-long friend of Lettice, pursued a career in midwifery, becoming Inspector of midwives in Nottingham. Gertrude Withers was appointed Matron at Bedales School, in Haywards Heath in the summer term 1899, enticing Lettice Schlesinger to join her a term later as an under-matron or housekeeper.
Working at Bedales School
Bedales was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and his wife Amy, as a humane alternative to the authoritarian regimes common in many public schools of the time. Badley was influenced by the teachings of Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori and Steiner. Amy Badley, née Garrett, was the half-sister of Rhoda Garrett the English suffragist and interior designer. She was also distant cousin of Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.[xxiv] The school’s initial intake was male but by 1898 girls were also admitted. As numbers increased there was clearly a need for another under-matron and Withers and Schlesinger persuaded Lettice Floyd to join the school after Easter 1900. The role of under matron or housekeeper was very much that of a housemother to the pupils and of course with all their nursing experience one might have expected them to nurse in the sick bay but when outbreaks of measles or chickenpox broke out, outside nurses were brought in.
In June 1900, Floyd went on her first school trip, escorting some of the younger pupils to Littlehampton for a few days. She and Miss Withers were responsible for the boys, staying at Warwick House. The pupils enjoyed bathing, rowing and games of tip and run. The following term the school moved to the newly built site, complete with servants’ hall. Miss Floyd and her friends may have been based in this hall which contrasted with their own childhoods where they would have had servants themselves.
Lettice Floyd – Second row, third from the right, Gertrude Withers Second Row third from the left (Reproduced with permission of the Bedales Archive)
The Autumn term of 1900 began with terrible news for Lettice. Her cousin, Edith Anna Coombs who had become a missionary in China had been stoned and burnt alive during the Boxer Rebellion.[xxv] More distress was to follow in October when one her colleagues, Elizabeth Ince, another housekeeper, committed suicide at the school. There was little time to grieve for the school was now in its new premises and there was much to do to settle in the pupils.
When Lettice arrived at Bedales one of the first pupils she met was Everard Guilford, who lived with his aunts, Sarah and Hannah Guilford in the Park, Nottingham. Bedales was popular with non-conformist families, particularly Unitarians, such as the Guilfords. Lettice would have been familiar with the Guilford sisters who as well as sitting on the School and Poor Law Boards were involved in many philanthropic ventures in Nottingham.
Amongst the girls who were at Bedales with Miss Floyd was Bertha Brewster who like Lettice would be arrested and imprisoned for her Suffrage work. Another pupil, Leslie Bickmore, frustrated by the lack of action in Oxford went on to lead the St Hugh’s Old Student Suffrage Society. Gertrude Herzfeld would go on to become the first woman paediatric surgeon in Scotland. Others included Saidee Bonnell who drove ambulances in France in the First World War and was awarded the Military Medal, Georgina Gillmore who became secretary to George Bernard Shaw, and Helen Yorke Stanger whose father unsuccessfully introduced a private member’s bill supporting female suffrage in 1908.
Many of the boys who Floyd knew at Bedales were to fight and die in World War One. They were either already in the forces or some of the first to sign up. Lionel Frank Hastings Mundy died on the 3rd September 1914 and one of the younger boys who may well have gone with Floyd to Littlehampton was the Russian, Dimitri Jarintzoff who died in 1917. In 1908, the same year that Floyd was first arrested, Dimitri alienated himself in school for voting against a motion to extend the franchise to women. Sadly, there were others who were killed. One who survived was Oliver Thornycroft, the cousin of Seigfried Sassoon, who had a career with the Admiralty in both world wars.
Lettice Floyd left Bedales at the end of the Summer Term 1901.[xxvi] She appeared to return to life in Berkswell, helping with the organising of celebrations for the coronation of Edward VII and assisting her sister with her reading circles. She and her sister Mary, were still living with their governess, Frances Mary Adkins, now referred to as companion and friend, and domestic staff, including a cook, maids and a groom. In May 1902, Lettice visited Bournemouth to support her dying cousin, Margaret Clapperton.
Amongst their friends in the Berkswell village, with whom they worked on church and other local activities was Maud Watson, (1864-1946) daughter of the Rector. She had been the First Woman Wimbledon champion in 1884.[xxvii] Katherine Lant, their much older cousin, was also a major player in village life. Their friendships indicate their wide interests in education and health. One such was Caroline Bishop, who had founded the Froebel Society and established the Froebel College and Kindergarten in Edgbaston.[xxviii] Through their cousin, Margaret Clapperton, they made friends with Mary Crees, a headmistress from London, an active promoter of the Child Study Association. Dr Ethel Bentham, from Newcastle was a progressive medical doctor who had been an active member of the Newcastle branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) since 1902. Like their aunt Jane Clapperton, Bentham was also a member of the Independent Labour Party. The sisters had also made a close friendship with Nancy Elliott from Nottingham who had become a nurse at the Jenny Lind Children’s Infirmary in Norwich.[xxix] Floyd noted to Mrs MacIntyre that they were living ‘in a quiet country place,’ yet they were clearly very active socially with forward thinking women from around the country.[xxx]
Lettice and Mary Floyd were becoming aware of the more militant suffragettes but decided to form a Berkswell branch of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society, calling a meeting on 10th June 1908, with Dr Ethel Bentham, their friend from Newcastle, as guest speaker. The society was formed on 25th June with some seventy members. Mary was secretary, Lettice, the treasurer. They soon found they had to defend the actions of the militant suffragettes and decided to join the more politically active Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU); their aunt Jane Clapperton had joined in 1907 and she encouraged her nieces to do the same. By August 1908 Lettice was working for the Union in Bristol, under the leadership of Anne Kenney,[xxxi] distributing copies of their paper in the poorer parts of the City. It was that summer that she met her future life partner, Annie Williams.[xxxii] In September she returned to Berkswell, and to all intents and purposes continued life as normal. On the 9th October she was helping organise the Harvest Festival at the parish church but four days later she stormed Parliament.
There is clearly more research to be conducted on Floyd’s life after leaving Bedales. Her later suffrage work has been recorded elsewhere.[xxxiii] In 1911, in protest for the vote many suffragettes refused to complete their census return. The one for Beechwood House is very incomplete with four people with absolutely no details. Presumably one of these was Floyd.
Legacy
This article aimed to demonstrate that as well as her nursing career Floyd was clearly influenced and responsive to her many friends and family in addressing the social and educational issues of the day. In his essay The Intellectual Aristocracy, Noel Annan states ‘family connections are part of the poetry of history’ and I think Lettice’s own family connections as well her close and clearly precious friendships demonstrate this.[xxxiv]
At her death she left bequests to Annie Williams but she also left £1000 to Lilian Parmiter, her old colleague from the Children’s Hospital and £1000 and an annuity of £100 to her old governess, Frances Adkins who was to outlive her by two years.[xxxv] In Coventry she is remembered for leaving land for a public park now known as Floyds Field. In 2021 women in Coventry planted saplings grown from seeds gathered from the remaining pine tree from Annie’s Wood, an arboretum near Batheaston, planted by Suffragettes. This particular tree was planted by Rose Lamartine Yates. Both Yates and Floyd were still supporting the Women’s Freedom League in 1931. It is fitting for Floyd that this tree is now in the garden of Eileen Paddock, a retired midwife, who with other members of the Batheaston community is fundraising to restore the pine.
Author: David S Stewart OBE D.Litt.h.c. DL is a member of Nottinghamshire Nurses History Group
Acknowledgements
With thanks to: Elizabeth Crawford
Jane Kirby, Bedales Archive
Beverley Cook, Curator, Suffragette Fellowship
The Museum of London
Eileen Shepherd, Nottinghamshire Nurses History Group
Val Wood, Nottinghamshire Nurses History Group
University of Nottingham Libraries, Manuscripts and Special Collections
The National Library of Scotland
Edinburgh Central Library
[i] Given John Knox’s views on women, it is strange for a Suffragette to acknowledge this heritage, but amongst Protestant Scots, this heritage was important. Floyd’s descent from Knox came via her grandmother, Ann Hume, wife of Alexander Clapperton. For details of the lineage, see Rogers, Charles (1879) Genealogical Memoirs of John Knox and of the family of Knox London: Printed for the Grampian Club.
[ii] In her letter to Mrs MacIntyre of the Suffragette Fellowship in 1932 Floyd seems less than enthused about nursing. ‘As most of the cases seemed to be due to bad housing, bad feeding and immorality, it was not entirely satisfactory work and it did not go to the root of the matter.’ Letter 25th August 1932 Suffragette Fellowship 58 87/73 (ii) The “root of the matter” might be seen in the context of her aunt, Jane H Clapperton’s work on Meliorism which suggested no support should be given to those charities which injured the independence of the poor or relieved them of parental responsibility.
[iii] Alexander Clapperton 1781-1849. There is a stained-glass window in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, dedicated to his memory. It depicts the Parable of the Ten Virgins and the Parable of the Talents. His large tomb is in St Cuthbert’s graveyard in Edinburgh.
[iv] The Rotherhams played a large part in the lives of the Floyd family. When Aunt Jane H Clapperton came south from Edinburgh, she would stay with the Rotherham family. It was whilst there that she befriended Charles Bray, the philosopher and social reformer who included George Eliot, Harriet Martineau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in his circle. As the Rotherham cousins were much older than the Floyd siblings, it was their children who were the companions of the Floyds. Alan and Arthur Rotherham became international rugby players.
[v] Floyd and her sister were also bequeathed a third of the residue of their father’s estate, the estate having been calculated to be £20,000, the equivalent of one and half million pounds today. Their mother left an estate of just over £9000, equivalent to £700,000. This included monies her mother had acquired from the estate of her son, Wiliam, who died intestate. Floyd was also to benefit from the wills of her sister Mary (1918) and brother George Alexander (1922). The majority of the latter’s estate of £26,000, equivalent to a million pounds today went to his sister. The importance of inheritance in being able to maintain a lifestyle cannot be underestimated. Interestingly their aunt, Jane Hume Clapperton, left nothing to her Floyd nieces and nephew, perhaps feeling they were sufficiently comfortable.
[vi] Whilst at Somerville, Coombs and her fellow students were chaperoned at mixed lectures by Charlotte Byron Green née Symonds who with her husband, a don at Balliol, had been an active supporter of the foundation of Somerville. She was also the secretary of the Association for Promoting the Education of Women. In widowhood she trained as a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and the London Hospital. She nursed the Master of Balliol, Jowett in his final days, Florence Nightingale, urging him to listen to what Green had to say. (See note 9)
[vii] Florence Balgarnie was also a member of Karl Pearson’s Men and Women’s Club.
[viii] For further information on Jane H Clapperton see Chapter 5 Deeds of Daring Rectitude in Cheadle T, Sexual progressives: reimagining intimacy in Scotland 1880-1914. Manchester University Press 2020. Jane H Clapperton’s philosophy of social reform was based largely on the theory of evolutionary eugenics but was radical in her views of sexual relations, promoting contraception and accepting that sex could be for pleasure.
[ix] Margaret Ann Clapperton was the daughter of David Edward Clapperton. St George’s Training College had been founded in 1886 to train women as teachers in secondary schools. Supported by funding raised by Mrs Fawcett’s Sub-Committee on Women’s Education from City of London Guilds, Margaret Clapperton and seven other women were sent in 1893 to the Educational Congress in Chicago. Influenced by the teaching of Dr Granville Stanley Hall and what they saw in America, Clapperton, Miss Mary Crees, a headmistress from London and Miss Mary Louch from Cheltenham Ladies College, formed the Child Study Society, later the British Child Study Association in Edinburgh in 1893. They established branches in Edinburgh, London and Cheltenham. There were strong links with the Froebel Society, a member of the Society’s Committee being Margaret McMillan, whose work inspired Lettice Floyd.
[x] 1932 letter ibid
[xi] Between 1931 and 1932 Lettice Floyd wrote four letters to the Suffragette Fellowship, in response to an appeal by the Fellowship for all Suffragettes who had served terms of imprisonment for militancy to describe their suffragette experience. In two letters, one dated 1st February 1931 and the other April 20th 1932, she states that she was born in 1865. When Elizabeth Crawford was writing Floyd’s biography for the Dictionary of Biography, she took Floyd’s script to read ‘age 23 took up nursing in a children’s hospital,’ meaning that she took up nursing in 1888. However, when looking at the original letter, I think she does put “age 25.” The shape of the figure is more of a squashed 5 rather than 3. It is not like the figure 3 at the top of the letter. Frustratingly the records of the Nottingham Children’s Hospital from 1888 to the end of 1891, no longer exist. We know from the 1891 census that she was at the hospital on 4th April 1891 and the records for March 1893 state that she had completed her two-year probation.
[xii] Morten H Questions for Women – Home Nurses and Hospital Nurses in The Nottinghamshire Guardian February 25th 1899 p 6
[xiii] Morten ibid. ‘Also, in some Children’s Hospitals the age limit is not so strict. At Bristol Hospital for sick children, probationers are taken from 20 to 28 years of age.’
[xiv] Floyd’s brother, George Alexander Floyd was at Keble College, Oxford. He taught at Tonbridge School for over thirty years. There is still an annual Floyd Reading Prize at the school. When George Floyd was at Keble, the wife of the Warden, Lavinia Talbot was a keen supporter of the establishment of Lady Margaret Hall. Miss Withers had two brothers at Oxford. Henry Livingston Withers was at Balliol, Oxford. He became Principal of Borough Training College before becoming Professor of Education at the University of Manchester. Hartley William Withers was at Christchurch College, Oxford. He became Editor of The Economist. Miss Parmiter’s brother, Spurrier Clavell Parmiter, was at Balliol and was President of the Oxford Union during his time there. Another contemporary at Balliol was William Edward Bowen who married Catharine Morse, the Lady Superintendent at the Children’s Hospital before Miss Parmiter. Floyd’s cousin, Alan Rotherham, was also at Balliol. The Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett, was a close friend and confidante of Florence Nightingale.
[xv] This debate was reported in the Nottingham Daily Express on December 21st 1893 p4. The following year the British Medical Association appealed to the government about measures to curb the increase in infant mortality, including the restriction of time spent by women in factories.
[xvi] Rev Henry Charles Russell was the Vicar of Wollaton, Nottingham. He was a cousin of Viscount Amberley, sometime MP for Nottingham. Amberley’s wife, Katherine Russell, née Stanley was an active suffragist, and daughter of Lady Stanley of Alderley, founder of Girton College, Cambridge and the Girls Public Day School Company, which included Nottingham Girls High School. Rev H C Russell was also Chairman of the Nottingham Nursing Association and he would sometimes run meetings of the Hospital and the Nursing Association consecutively.
[xvii] The Rev Canon Francis Morse, Vicar of St Mary’s Nottingham was a keen advocate of the Children’s Hospital. He had also been instrumental in establishing the Nottingham High School for Girls, hence the link. His daughter, Catharine became Lady Superintendent of the Children’s Hospital in 1879, leaving in 1890, ostensibly for another post but in actual fact to get married. Miss Maria Elizabeth Skeel, the Headmistress of the Nottingham High School was active in the National Union of Women Workers (later the National Union of Women Workers) working alongside Lady Laura Ridding and Louise Creighton.
[xviii] Dr Lewis Walter Marshall (1849-1929) gained his MBCM from Aberdeen University as had Dr (later Sir) James Frederic Goodhart, the author of the highly popular Student’s Guide to the Diseases of Children 1885.
[xix] Victorian Nottingham – A Story in Pictures Volume 14 A Nottingham historical film unit publication Richard Iliffe and Wilfred Baugley (1975).
[xx] Arthur Rotherham 1869-1946 Captained the England Rugby team. Became Superintendent of the Darenth Asylum and Schools before becoming a Commissioner of the Board of Control under the Mental Deficiency Act and then Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy.
[xxi] Burdett, Henry. Nurses’ Food, Work and Recreation (1890) p7
[xxii] Letter from Floyd
[xxiii] On 30th August that year, Floyd’s world was also rocked when her cousin, Alan Rotherham 1862-1898, another famous rugby international, took his own life.
[xxiv] Being an orphan, Amy was brought up in the household of her half-sister, Rhoda who lived with her distant cousin, Agnes Garrett, the sister of Millicent and Elizabeth.
[xxv] She was the first Protestant missionary to be killed by the Boxers in Shanxi Province. There is
a Coombs Scholarship, named in her memory, at Somerville.
[xxvi] Gertrude Withers left in 1904, Lettice Ruth Schlesinger left in 1907. Miss Withers was replaced as Matron by Helen Ford Simmons, who had also nursed at the Nottingham Children’s Hospital.
[xxvii] In 1917 Watson was awarded an MBE for her work as a nurse at the Berkswell Rectory Auxiliary Hospital.
[xxviii] Caroline Bishop (1846-1929) Founded the London Froebel Society in 1874 with her cousin Adelaide Manning, one of the first women to attend Girton College. In 1904, the Greet Free Kindergarten in Birmingham was opened, staffed from Bishop’s college in Edgbaston. It was the first nursery school in Birmingham.
[xxix] Both Lettice and her sister left money to Nancy in their wills. She died in Buenos Aries, Argentina in 1934 – a few months after Lettice.
[xxx][xxx] Letter from Lettice Floyd to Mrs Martyn 20th April 1932 – Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Museum of London
[xxxi] Annie Kenney 1879-1953 Active in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), in 1907 she became organiser for the South-West and was based in Bristol until 1911.
[xxxii] Annie Williams 1860-1943 A teacher by background. From 1910 to 1911 she was active in Newcastle and Floyd moved north to join her. She and Floyd were sentenced to a month in Holloway in 1912 after smashing windows in Parliament. They both went on hunger strike and both were forcibly fed for which they received the WSPU Hunger Strike Medal for Valour. They later worked for the cause in Cardiff.
[xxxiii] See Elizabeth Crawford. Floyd Lettice Annie (1865-1894), suffragette Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 p.170. Routledge (2003)
[xxxiv] Annan, N (1999) Essay reproduced in The Dons London: Harper Collins
[xxxv] In her will Lettice also allows for the residue of her estate to go to the Rachel Macmillan Training College in Deptford, for educational work. She had indicated to the trustees that there would be £30,000. In the event it was about £10,000 so other funds had to be raised and a new open-air Holiday House, Margaret MacMillan House was opened in Wrotham, Kent in 1936 by the Duke of York for 40 children of nursery age. The generous bequest of Lettice Floyd was duly recognised. Closed since 2018, its fate is in the hands of the London Borough of Greenwich.
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