It is not often that we identify gaps in our collection but ‘Nurses for the Needy or Bible-Women Nurses in the Homes of the London Poor’ by Ellen Henrietta Ranyard (1875) had us contacting the book seller immediately.

We already hold a copy of ‘The Story of the Ranyard mission 1857 -1937’, and in recent Treasures Tours we’ve been highting the topic of trained nurses versus the volunteer nurse and this book adds nicely to this discussion.

The author was a missionary who founded the London Bible and Domestic Female Mission in 1857. She started training nurses in 1868, and ultimately eighty of them were engaged in attending the sick poor in the poorest districts of London. This edition is inscribed by the author ‘To Dear Miss Bacon with very kind regards from Ellen Ranyard. 26 July 1875’.

The process of training Bible Women nurses is simplified in the rules that are laid out in appendix E. The first rule is that they are to be trained for the first three months to be a ‘Bible women’ the author quotes ’Truthfulness, honesty, and kindliness of heart to be essential qualifications. Rule two states that nurses ‘spend three months in Hospital or Infirmary, half in the surgical and half in the medical wards; and after that a lying-in hospital.’

 

Rule three states that after these first six months, the nurse is now a probationer for further three months under a ‘Lady’ or ‘Nurse Pioneer’ and so the process is spelt out in each rule until the final rule, ten, where ‘she has a Card to keep regularly, in which her weeks work is recorded…’

To find out more about our Nursing History Collection please search the library catalogue and select Nursing History Collection as the library you wish to search under the Royal College of Nursing.