In this blog we hear from Lauren McKay who joined the CRC last year as a Modern Apprentice. Lauren will be telling us all about the fantastic new resource list on the history of nursing that she created.
You can find the list on our website: http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/exhibits/histnursing.htm
 |
| Nurses on a balcony at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh |
My name is
Lauren McKay and since September 2020 I’ve been working at the CRC’s user
services as their current modern apprentice.
During the
last January lockdown, the majority of our services moved to ‘remote only’ which
meant I was working almost solely from home. Tasked with creating an online
resource list for LHSA, I was sent a list of topics to choose from and found
myself gravitating towards one topic in particular- the history of nursing.
Before
starting this project, my knowledge of nursing history had only one portrait
within its hall of fame and that was Florence Nightingale’s. At present, that
same hall of fame has been embellished with the addition of many more portraits
of proud pioneers and fearless women.
One of the women I was particularly captivated with was the nurse turned explorer Kate Marsden. She went to Siberia in the 1890s to investigate an alleged herb which was said could be used as a cure for leprosy and wrote the wonderfully titled book about her travels: On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers which I managed to find online through internet archive. The journey took her 11 months in total! Unfortunately, she did not find the cure she was looking for but instead set up a hospital for lepers in a town called Vilyuysk. She faced criticism, however, from people who did not believe the veracity of her exploits but worse still, her reputation was thrown in to ruin when rumours started to spread claiming that Marsden was only doing these good deeds as a means to cover up for her homosexuality and financial schemes. This scandal erupted around the same time as the doomed Oscar Wilde libel trail, a time in which ignorance and hysteria surrounding sexuality and gender roles was particularly rife.
One highlight in terms of a visual resource was the nurse Ethel
Miller’s digitised scrapbook which contains autographs, poems and sketches done
by the patients at Craigleith Military Hospital. It’s a truly precious item as
there is something very moving about virtually flicking through the sketchbook,
reading the often humorous poems and admiring the cartoons:
You can find a digital copy of the scrapbook here: https://bit.ly/2RSeM0d
The auld lichts of the " profession " sniffed the air in disdain at " them Bloomsbury nurses," to whom they probably added the epithet " bloomin' " not in a complimentary sense. " If I was you, I wouldn't send for the parish doctor," counselled one of the fraternity to a poor woman with a wound in her leg ; " because the first thing he'll do will be to send for one of them district nurses from Bloomsbury Square, and if they come here you'll have to keep your room clean and open your winder, clear out the things from under your bed, and they'll turn the whole place topsy-turvey so as you won't know your own home ; and you'll feel just as if you was in a horspital
The irony is that the individual is describing with contempt what we would now perceive as basic good cleanliness practices. It’s quite interesting to note that such practices were not always considered welcome, or even good for that matter.
https://archive.org/details/historyofnursing00tool/page/n9/mode/2up?q
Nursing, as I now know, played a huge role in the improvement of
medical practices, progresses in public health, and individual nurses even
played a substantial part in advancing recognition of women’s rights. Sophia
Duleep Singh, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh empire, godchild to
Queen Victoria, was a VAD nurse during WW1 while also an incredibly outspoken
suffragette and activist. Or Gertrude Townend and Catherine Pine, who both
helped set up a nursing home for suffragettes recovering from force feeding and
imprisonment. I was expecting to discover a lot of incredible women, for a
profession largely championed by women, but I found myself in complete awe
while uncovering their stories. Their sheer intelligence, skill, resilience, bravery,
and their collective drive to improve the world and care for its people was
simply put: breath-taking.
I could go on writing about the resource list all day, but I hope that
what I have highlighted gives an idea of the variety of resources which are
included. I was surprised by the wealth of information available online and I
believe that the list will be a useful tool to consult as starting off point to
anyone researching nursing history remotely.
While fully immersed in exploring resources for the list I
began to understand its purpose as being threefold:
· To debunk the many myths surrounding nursing,
such as the common held misconception that nursing has always been a vocation
rather than a profession which required the traditional ‘feminine touch’ and
the self- sacrifice that is believed to accompany it (especially harmful when
in popular culture male nurses are portrayed as emasculated). Nurses fought for
decades before their educational needs were met and it is because of this that
today they are trained to be highly skilled and resourceful individuals.
· To discover history’s incredible
pioneering nurses and the diverse roots of the profession and how it evolved
(the resource list covers UK nursing predominantly).
· To disseminate knowledge remotely in times of COVID-19, when
research is made particularly difficult as in person visits have decreased due
to safety measures.
I am so thankful to LHSA for this opportunity which has enriched my
knowledge, respect and appreciation for this profession- I’ve found a new
passion!
