We currently have a small exhibition on the ground floor of Central Library highlighting items from our collections relating to nurses/nursing and the stories they tell. We have included the well known and the ordinary nurse.
Edith Cavell is famous for being executed by the Germans in World War 1 in Belgium. Perhaps less well known is her time in Manchester 1906/7 working for the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution , an organisation that provided nursing services to the community – a type of early District Nursing. Nurses would live in one of the organisation’s 5 Nurses’ Homes and go out from there to see patients. Edith Cavell was at Bradford House, on Ashton Old Road. Significantly she temporarily took over as Matron and an entry in the organisation’s Executive Committee Minutes (1907) mentions her by name:
Archives reference: M504/2/1-2
We also display a map (showing Nurses’ Homes) and a list of diseases treated by its nurses from the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution’s Annual Reports.
We hold a number of Nurses’ Registers for various hospitals. Some of these are displayed to show some more interesting entries such as, continuing with the World War1/ Belgium theme, an entry for a nurse from Crumpsall Hospital and Institution who was awarded the Queen Elisabeth medal by the Belgians for service during World War 1. The Nurses’ Registers give plenty of information on an individual nurse’s training/employment as well as some family information (family historians may want to take note) and details of what the nurse did after she left the profession. Often wedding invitations would be included in the registers!
World War 2 also features in the exhibition, namely the 14 nurses that were killed at Salford Royal Hospital in June 1941.
Louise Da-Cocodia, the first black senior nursing officer in Manchester, also features. We have a collection of photographs relating to her including this one shown in the exhibition (DPA/1828/17).