Letter from the Chair and Editor

This year has been a busy one for the History of Nursing Society as may be gleaned from the many activities and projects highlighted in this edition of our newsletter.

Key among these was the prestigious Monica Baly lecture presented at this year’s RCN Congress by Carolyn Gibbons.

Meanwhile the work of the society continues and our membership, which is now more than 700, continues to flourish and grow.

In this newsletter we focus on the impressive work being undertaken by the RCN’s history societies in Northern Ireland and in London and the South East. This shows how local societies offer a range of activities to their members while developing the history of our profession.

We now wish to compile a directory of all the UK societies for our website so new members may be directed to their local group so please send me details of yours.

We would like to extend the warmest welcome to our new adviser at the History of Nursing Society who is Susan McGann. Susan probably is well known to us as the RCN Archivist, as well as her work with the late Monica Baly and her own impressive record of research and publication in nursing history. We look forward to working with her.

On behalf our members I would like to congratulate Grainne Anthony who has contributed a short article based on her dissertation of the life and work of Eva Luckes. Grainne who is a member of the London and South East history society has been awarded a masters with merit for this.

I am sure all of us would like to congratulate the Northern Ireland Society and wish them success with their project which is researching the real life stories of nurse who practised during the ‘Troubles’ and we will be keeping members up to date with this as it develops. 

Nurses care for people during civil unrest and war and I am sure our members wholeheartedly support the setting up of national memorial to commemorate all the UK nurses who fell in conflict and we thank Susan McGann for her article on this.
The RCN has now launched an online petition to collect signatures in support of this national memorial so can I ask you to add your name to this by accessing www.rcn.org.uk/warheroes  Can I also ask you to share details of this with your family, friends and nursing colleagues and so they support the petition too. 

In this connection I believe the work of our society is not only to research our own history but to commemorate all those nurses who have served our country in peace and war so I was pleased to help collect donations at RCN Congress for the Mary Seacole Memorial and have invited Professor Elizabeth Anionwu to submit an article on progress with this in our next newsletter.

Readers will find Sharon Palfrey’s article on the setting up of the Glenside Hospital Museum an inspiring one and I, with many of our members, will look forward to visiting this.

Readers will also be interested in the work of the European Association for the History of Nursing as set out in Professor Christine Hallett’s article.

As Chair of the RCN History Society I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this newsletter and hope the next edition will be as equally inspiring.

Lastly, if you did not receive a copy of the last newsletter, the archive can be found in our online pages. To check your details are correct, visit www.rcn.org.uk/myrcn