Nursing in the 1900s
Nurse Blanch Snelgrove offers a rare insight into the life of a nurse at the turn on the 20th Century in Central Middlesex Hospital: the first sixty years.
Communal meals with Matron, a nightly curfew and annual salary of £10 were all de rigueur at Willesden Infirmary in London.
Blanch, who worked at the infirmary from 1911-14, noted there was no formal training beyond being shown how to do dressings, bathe patients and attend a weekly lecture. They were also expected to study the four volume Science and the Art of Nursing.
The nurses worked a 12-hour shift alternating between three months on day duty and three months on nights with one night off a month.
A regulation clock and bonnet had to be worn outside working hours and all nurses back in their living quarters by 10pm or face being reported to matron by the porter.
There was no hot or cold running water on the wards, no segregation of patients and lice was commonplace although Sunday bought some relief in the shape of the local parson playing his harmonium. Heavenly.