Monica Baly Bursary winners plan important new research

Tommy Dickinson explores all-too-recent history of homosexuals’ mistreatment

I feel very privileged and extremely grateful to have won the Monica Baly Bursary, which to my knowledge is the only funding available in the United Kingdom for research into the history of nursing.

It means a great deal to me as it acknowledges that the Royal College of Nursing is willing to fund a piece of research that not only explores nursing, but also looks at the perceptions of a population who were historically seen as mentally ill – gay people and transvestites.

From 1949 to the early 1990s, psychiatry’s treatment of “sexual deviation”, which included homosexuality and transvestism, was largely based on behaviour therapy. The most common treatment was behavioural aversion therapy with electric shocks and/or nausea induced by apomorphine as aversive stimuli.

While nurses played a key role in providing these “treatments”, the full nature of that role is largely undocumented. My study, therefore, aims to examine the experiences of patients and nurses, and meanings attached to such treatments in Britain (1949-1992), exploring reasons, experiences and how individual lives were affected.

A particular focus on nurses’ experiences and perspectives addresses a hitherto neglected area.

Recruiting participants

It has been estimated that only about 1,000 patients received these treatments, therefore participant recruitment has been a particular challenge to my study. However, I have recruited 20 participants to date, a mixture of both former patients and nurses. The participants are located all around the UK so the bursary is providing a significant contribution towards the travel costs to undertake these interviews.

I feel my study is highly original, making an important contribution to the documented history of experiences of individuals “diagnosed” as mentally ill because of sexual deviance, as well as clinicians’ experiences and constructions of the “management” of individuals belonging to stigmatised groups.

Modern nursing requires a clear evidence base for care and intervention, but should also be informed by an equally clear understanding of history which considers the adequacy and appropriateness of disease classifications and treatments originating from the interplay of scientific, social and societal perspectives.

Therefore, I feel the RCN has done a really important job in protecting the Monica Baly Bursary to fund original historical nursing research, and I hope this can continue to help new nurse historians like myself.

Tommy Dickinson is Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. Email: tdickinson@uclan.ac.uk

Rosemary Cook is looking for another great nurse named Florence Nightingale

I was delighted to be awarded a Monica Baly Bursary for my research into the life and career of Florence Nightingale Shore. Miss Shore was a relative and god-daughter of our most famous nurse, and one of the first generation of nurses to benefit from her influence on the profession.

Miss Shore attended a series of prestigious training schools: the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh for nursing, the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin for midwifery and Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Institute for Nurses (now the Queen’s Nursing Institute) for district nurse training. She later received medals for her work in the South African (Boer) war, and the First World War.

However, little is known of her early life, her correspondence with Florence Nightingale or the details of her nursing work in England and abroad. There are only intriguing snippets: she went to China, her aunt was a baroness and she was nearly 50 years old when she joined the French Red Cross.

Out of her godmother’s shadow

What is known for certain is that her life was ended in 1920 after a savage assault on her while she was travelling on a train. My research is working back from this well-reported event to uncover the full story of her contribution to nursing, at home and abroad, and to understand her more fully as a person.

The Monica Baly Bursary will enable me to trace Miss Shore’s family roots and early life through family history and public record searches, and obtain copies of key documents such as her nurse training record, army nursing service record and medal citations. It will also allow me to subscribe to online newspaper archives and travel to local record offices to consult original material.

I plan to write a biography of Miss Shore that sets her extraordinary nursing career in the context of the major developments in the profession – and in women’s lives – through the late Victorian/early Edwardian eras. My aim is to bring Florence Nightingale Shore out of the shadow of her famous godmother and re-introduce her to the profession as a significant nursing figure in her own right.

Rosemary Cook is Director of the Queen’s Nursing Institute, London.