model initiated in British hospitals.14 By
1867,a team of Nightingale nurses had
10
1 1
1 2
1 3
14
M. Vicinus, p.87.
C. Dyhouse, G irls Growing up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London, 1981), p. 140.
M. Vicious, p. 92
.
M. Baly, Florence Nightingale ••• ,p. 23. Cited in M. Vicinus, p. 92.
instituted a training school in Sydney.!5 In 1873, three American hospitals patterned their nursing training on Nightingale principles and Bellevue Hospital in New York appointed a lady superintendent from England to supervise the nursing service. 16 In Canada, in 1 874, the Montreal Hospital appointed an English nurse to supervise hospital nursing services. !7 From the 1 880s, nurses trained in English hospitals emigrated to New Zealand and found employment in public hospitals.18 These nurses introduced new standards of nursing, heralding the replacement of the untrained as guardians of the hospitalised sick and adopted the precedent set in British hospitals of a profession led by trained women considered to have superior womanly and leadership qualitites.19
In New Zealand, English nurses appointed as lady superintendents at Wellington and Auckland Hospitals in the 1880s brought beliefs about the new order of British nursing to state hospitals. They led the crusade to transform the menial tasks of everyday domestic work into an noble occupation for women. As had occurred in England, these women, aligning themselves with the Victorian ideas about women's 'nature' and women's 'duty', brought new standards of cleanliness and order to New Zealand hospital wards, along with a moral standing symbolic of the respectability of Victorian women. The enthusiastic pursuit by New Zealand society in the 1880s of a stable economic state and a 'respectable society' influenced
1 5 1 6
1 7
1 8
1 9
J. Godden, ' "We are Professional Women" .. .', pp. 34.
E.D. Baer, 'Nursing's Divided House -
An Historical View',
Nursing Research, 1985, 34: 1, . p. 34.M. Baly, Florence Nightingale ••• , p. 143.
It seems likely that Dr G.W. Grabham who came from St Thomas's Hospital and was appointed Inspector of Hospital and Charitable Institutions in November 1882 and worlced in this capacity until 1886, requested the employment of English-trained nurses as matrons at the major New Zealand hospitals.
J.A. Rodgers, 'Nursing Education in New Zealand, 1883 to 1930: The Persistence of
the
Nightingale Ethos', MA niesis in Education, Massey University, 1985, p. 1 1 . M. Brown, p. 48.the development of New Zealand nursing.20 From a time when every woman assisted in caring for the sick neighbour, when voluntary work among the 'poor' or the sick tended to be implemented by women, there developed a specialised professional nursing corps which took over the official function of caring for the sick and generated new nursing and moral standards within public hospital care.
The importance to the emerging system of New Zealand nursing of the adoption of the image of British womanly behaviour cannot be underestimated. Unless their work could be associated with proper moral behaviour nurses would have had little chance to prove their professional abilities to the public, to doctors and to male administrators. The early history of New Zealand nursing is bound up with convincing hospital authorities of the 'unhandy' skills of the untrained, winning of public support and gaining recognition for a particular women's profession. Nightingale had set the standards for lady-like women to be employed as nurse leaders to guide the probationers in serving the sick and poor, and this image influenced New Zealand nursing as much as it had influenced Britain. From 1883, the new system of New Zealand nursing developed to replace the 'handy woman' and her 'unhandy methods' with nurses who were considered to be both morally superior and skilled in nursing.21
The fust reports on nursing reforms in New Zealand hospitals followed the appointment in 1883 of Annie Crisp as lady superintendent of Auckland Hospital and Mrs Bernard Moore as matron at Wellington Hospital. The 1885 annual report on hospitals reported favourably on the skills of these British trained nurses who, through attention to cleanliness, began turning the 'repugnant, primitive' hospital
20 J. Phillips, A Man's Country? p. 40.
2 1 Comparisons made by nurses, doctors and politicians on the differences between the untrained
and trained nurses were
also made betweenthe
mllrained and trained midwives.wards into 'salubrious' settings for patients.22 At Wellington Hospital, Moore drew into the ranks of nursing a 'higher-order' of untrained woman to attend to the sick. In the next two years the reports on Auckland Hospital showed an increasing enthusiasm for the standard of nursing provided by 'well-trained, intelligent and ladylike [women] being evidently drawn from a class very much superior to the old fashioned hospital nurse'. 'Well educated ladies' now served 'their apprenticeship with other probationers' .23 Presumably the 'other probationers' were not considered well educated ladies. Within two years of her appointment at Auckland, Crisp had implemented a training scheme for nursing recruits. , Probationers, mostly unmarried women, entered a one year training course, receiving their practical instruction from the matron.24 No allowance was paid until the second year when a salary of £20 was paid.25 By
1 887,
sixteen nurses had received certificates of proficiency from Auckland Hospital.26 By189 1 , the Dunedin Hospital trustees had decided to 'get
into line with modem ideas of nursing' developing in the larger hospitals of the nation, and replaced the men who had acted as 'male nurses' with an all female nursing staff of 'ladies who were desirous' of receiving a training.27 Following their training, these nurses became the vanguard of the new nursing order. As they moved on to other hospitals, they implemented similar training schemes, setting standards for22 23 24 25 26 27
Special Reports on Hospitals in New Zealand, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1885, H-I8a, Vol. m, pp. 2, 18. Passenger (Assisted) list, Westmeath, 16 May 1 883 (1M 15/435), Miss A. Crisp, National Archives (NA). Miss Annie Alice Crisp trained at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley and possessed 'in eminent degree the qualities which are desirable'. Her worlc as an anny nurse during the Zulu War earned her the decoration of the Royal Red Cross. Mrs Bernard Moore, sometimes referred to as Miss Moore, was given her appointment at Wellington Hospital in 1882. For detailed information on Crisp see M. Brown.
Report on Hospitals in New Zealand, AJHR , 1887, H-19, Vol. IT, p. 23.
Most nurses appeared to have been unmarried during ttaining. The data available from 1903 to 1920 shows only
three
probationers who were married and one who was either widowed or separated. Only one has been identified as being unmarried and having a childM. Brown, p. 49. Ibid., p. 42.