Nursing and Medical staff group at Nottingham General Hospital, c.1895 (UHG Ph 3/4/1) Published with the kind permission of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham.
This page is dedicated to the publishing of articles and other related posts that bring to light the history of nursing in Nottingham city and county. Published materials are organised into the following categories:
We welcome a range of original contributions relating to the history of nursing in Nottinghamshire for publication on our website, including:
- Short research articles – up to 1,500 words on a topic relating to the history of nursing (these are generally more formal than the ‘Blog’ posts)
- Blog posts – up to 1,500 words (reflections, reminiscences, memoirs, transcribed oral history interviews, personal interest, interesting objects/spaces/places).
- Book reviews – up to 1,000 words
- Reports on events – up to 750 words
- Community forum posts – up to 500 words (discussion thread starters, questions/appeals for information, advertisement of relevant events/activities/groups).
For more information about making a contribution for publication, please see our ‘Guidelines for Contributors’ document, which can be downloaded below. Alternatively, please do free to get in contact with us at our email address: nottsnursinghistory@outlook.com
Lettice Annie Floyd (1865-1934) – Nottingham Children’s Hospital Nurse and Suffragette
Lettice Floyd is well known as a suffragette but she was also a trained nurse. This article aimed to demonstrate that , in addition to 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.
Celebrating Black History Month: Nurses Association of Jamaica, Nottingham Branch
The Nottingham branch of the UK Nurses Association of Jamaica emerged in the early 1980s and has made a significant contribution to the lives of BAME nurses and the wider community. This blog explores the early history of this Association.
Elizabeth Fawcett Ross 1867-1950: The first Supervisor of Midwives in Nottinghamshire
In 1905, Elizabeth Fawcett Ross was appointed as the first Supervisor of Midwives in Nottinghamshire. Pauline Woodhouse outlines her achievement and contribution to the development of the nursing and midwifery professions at a local and national level.
Ellen Frances Dwight 1863-1936: Nottingham’s forgotten matron
Frances Ellen Dwight trained as a workhouse nurse and completed 33 years continuous service for the Nottingham Poor Law Union. She was superintendent nurse and then a matron of the Nottingham Workhouse and Bagthorpe Workhouse Infirmary. David Stewart provides a comprehensive overview of her life and work and highlights her role in developing nursing in…
Lucy Osburn 1836-1891: founder of Nightingale nursing in Australia
In 1868, Lucy Osburn and five other nurses arrived in Sydney, Australia to found a school of nursing. They were employed by the New South Wales (NSW) Government on the recommendation of Florence Nightingale. Despite Nightingale withdrawing her support, Osburn persevered to become the acknowledged founder of Nightingale nursing in Australia.
Book review: In Search of Mary Seacole – the making of a cultural icon (2022)
David Stewart reviews this meticulously researched biography which gives an insight into the real woman who was full of energy, enterprise and warmth.
The early history of the Royal College of Nursing in Nottingham
As the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) announces strike action by its members, the first in England and Wales since the College was formed in 1916, Val Wood looks at some of the earliest references to the RCN in Nottingham and members who had links to the city. The Nottingham branch of the RCN or…
Edith Ann Mills Coleridge or Mother Mary Philip, 1847-1927 – the first trained nurse of the Little Company of Mary Sisters
Mother Mary Philip Coleridge rose from a relatively humble background as the daughter of a butcher, to train as a nurse and lead the religious order, The Little Company of Mary, which is an International Order of Religious Sisters. David Stewart discusses Mother Mary Philip Coleridge’s life and how this informed her nursing career. He…
Katherine Twining (1857–1943) – A nursing pioneer with a lasting legacy
Katherine Twining was a head nurse at Nottingham Children’s Hospital at the beginning of her career and went on to become a pioneer, promoting and developing standards of training in district nursing and midwifery. Jill Oakland outlines her career and lasting legacy. Katherine Twinning (date unknown). Reproduced with permission of Lloyd Thomas. Katherine Twining was…
Gertrude Jeanie Challis 1873-1948: County Superintendent of the Nottinghamshire Federation of District Nursing Associations
Gertrude Jeanie Challis trained as a district nurse and midwife and became County Superintendent of the Nottinghamshire Federation of District Nursing Associations in 1914. She was committed to supporting family health and wellbeing in the county and was instrumental in developing Mothers’ and Babies’ Welcome events. Pauline Woodhouse explores her career and achievements. Gertrude Jeanie…
Anne Elizabeth Wood (nee Lewis) (1891 – 1980)
This case study, by Val Henstock, outlines her grandmother’s nursing career and demonstrates how married women with families could maintain a nursing career in the community in the first half of the twentieth century. Sadly the author was unable to identify any record of her grandmother’s registration as a qualified nurse. This highlights one the…
Minnie Drakard 1867–1941: infection prevention nursing pioneer
Starting out as a Sister on a Typhoid ward at Nottingham General Hospital, Minnie Drakard went on to have a distinguished career as Matron at Plaistow Fever Hospital and she had a lifelong commitment to raising the profile of this speciality. Rosemary Collins explores her life and legacy. Minnie Drakard was born in Boston,…
Celebrating nursing history: Exhibitions (May 2022)
Some of you may have seen on our social media that we had a very exciting weekend a few weeks ago, travelling around Nottinghamshire to showcase our research and nursing memorabilia at two exhibitions. On 14 May 2022 we were at the Nottinghamshire County Show, held at the Newark Showground as part of the ‘Health…
Striking Nurses Ejected from Wards after Four-Hour Battle
12 April 2022 marks the centenary of a dramatic strike led by Nottinghamshire female nurses at Nottinghamshire County Mental Hospital, Saxondale. They were protesting against wage cuts and increased hours which were being forced on them by their employer, Nottinghamshire County Council. The strike is remarkable for the women’s determination to stand up for their…
Nurse Edith Annie Freeman (1888 – 1937)
Edith Annie Freeman was born in Sutton-on-Trent in July 1888, to William, a basket maker, and Annie Freeman. By 1911 she was working as a nurse in the County Asylum in Lincoln, as part of a staff of forty-eight nurses, tending to over one thousand patients.[i] The asylum, designed in the Italian style, was built…
Appeal for photographs/items relating to north-Nottinghamshire hospitals, 1952 – 2022 for jubilee display
The Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is planning to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee later this year by creating a local display that celebrates nursing and hospitals in north Nottinghamshire over the past seventy years. The trust is looking for photographs and any other memorabilia (leaflets, posters, badges, buckles, course textbooks etc.) relating to…
Phoebe Wells Tether (1822-1896): Superintendent Nurse from Edwinstowe
In this article, David Stewart examines the life and career of an early nurse, Phoebe Wells Tether, born in Edwinstowe, North Nottinghamshire, who became Superintendent Nurse at the famous Grove Hall Asylum c.1851. I first became aware of Phoebe Wells Tether whilst preparing a talk for the Backlit Asylum Project, entitled ‘Patrons, Matrons and Patients’,…
Did the Nurses Registration Act of 1919 achieve its aim of public protection?
In acknowledgement of the centenary of the opening of the Nurse Register on 30 September 1921, this blog explores the history of the campaign for nurse registration led by Ethel Gordon Fenwick and its resonance with debates around the need for legal protection of the title ‘nurse’ today. The title ‘nurse’ conjures up an array…
Book Review: Florence Nightingale at Home (2020)
Paul Crawford, Anna Greenwood, Richard Bates and Jonathan Memel, Florence Nightingale at Home, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. xix + 263pp., €23.91. ISBN 978-3-030-46533-9 (Paperback). That Florence Nightingale lived with Gladstone, Bismarck and Mr. Herbert might come as a surprise to some, but these were three of the sixty-four Persian cats, which were allowed the…
History of the First Dermatology Liaison Nurse in the UK
Sandra Lawton, OBE, Nurse Consultant Dermatology and Clinical Lead at the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, describes the challenges of working with patients with dermatological conditions and why she developed the pioneering role of dermatology liaison nurse in Nottingham. My dermatology career began as a part time staff nurse on a 30-bedded ward in 1987. During…
Ethel Gordon Fenwick’s life as a probationer at the Manchester Royal Infirmary.
A young woman deciding to embark on a nursing career in the late 19th century faced the same decision as students today – where is the best place to train? However, while today’s applicants have the luxury of consulting online brochures and league tables, pioneering nurses such as Ethel Gordon Fenwick had very little information to…
Ethel Gordon Fenwick at Nottingham Children’s Hospital
In 1878 – at the age of twenty -one – Ethel Gordon Fenwick (nee Manson) started her nurse training at the Children’s Hospital, Nottingham. She was one of two lady probationers 1 attached to the hospital and she joined a nursing team of a lady superintendent, two probationers, four nurses and six house servants. Nottingham Children’s Hospital…
Who Was Ethel Gordon Fenwick? The First Nurse
James Shepherd outlines Ethel’s career and the fight for nurse registration. December 2019 marks one hundred years since the introduction of the Nurses’ Registration Act – an Act which introduced a compulsory register for professional nurses. It was instrumental in both increasing patient safety and also in regulating and standardising the nursing profession. This Act…
Community Forum: Peggy Vivian Hardy (neé Keyte), 1921-1993
This post, and wonderful accompanying images, has been submitted by Peggy’s granddaughter who would be interested to know more about the other staff her grandmother worked with and what it was like to work at Saxondale Hospital in the 1960s. Can you identify any of the nurses or doctors in the images? Peggy Keyte was…
Beeston Hall Neurasthenic Hospital, 1919-1923
In this article Jill Oakland, of the Nottinghamshire Nursing History Group, brings to light the history of Beeston Hall Neurasthenic Hospital, established after the First World War. There are no surviving archival records of Beeston Hall, yet local newspaper reports reveal much about the patient and staff experience at the hospital in the early-1920s. In…
Community Forum: RAF Langar Station Sick Quarters 1942-1943
The Field Detectives are currently researching the history of RAF Langar airfield. We hope to provide a unique insight into the life of a Second World War airfield, which captures 207 squadron’s arrival from RAF Bottesford in September 1942, through to their departure to RAF Spilsby in October 1943. Our initial investigations have focused on…
Community Forum: Our Nursing History Must Be Preserved
When I started my nurse training in London in 1981 I was determined to avoid the forbidding, gothic, dark Victorian hospitals with their fussy uniforms and belts and buckles. Instead I opted for Charing Cross Hospital, with its race track wards, super-fast lifts, state of the art “CASS” communications system and thankfully a “j-cloth” dress…
Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses by ‘A Lady Volunteer’
In this article, David Stewart describes the varied experience of Frances Margaret Taylor, a lady volunteer, who nursed in the Crimean War. Through an analysis of Taylor’s anonymously published book ‘Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses’, this article highlights some of the social tensions, along class and gender lines, described by Taylor in her account of…
Marian Bannister (1879 – 1970)
Marian Bannister was born in Beeston and trained as a nurse in Nottingham and Sheffield. Jill Oakland, who has researched Bannister’s life, outlines her career which spans two World Wars and the honour of a Red Cross Medal 1st Class in 1918.
Arnot Hill Auxiliary Hospital
Local historian, Bob Massey, has written a book, ‘Arnot Hill Auxiliary Hospital’, which explores the complete history of the institution in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, from its inception at the end of 1914 to its close in 1919, following the end of the First World War. Massey was inspired to write the book by the life-saving treatment…
Sister Henrietta Stockdale (1847-1911): How a Nottingham Woman Became South Africa’s Florence Nightingale
Val Wood, of the Nottingham Nursing History Group, describes the life story of Sister Henrietta Stockdale (1847-1911), her friendship with Ethel Gordon Fenwick, and her contribution to nursing history.
The Matrons of Florence Boot Hall, University College, Nottingham
Laura Violet Rose Coles. Photograph reproduced with permission of Peter Savage Pauline Woodhouse uncovers the lives of two women, Louisa Long and Laura Coles, tracing their careers from First World War nurses to matrons at Florence Boot Hall, University College, Nottingham, in the first half of the twentieth-century. This article uses nursing, electoral, and births, marriages…
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