What makes this special is that a book that was awarded as a Sunday school prize in 1897 has found its way into the RCN library collection to capture the history of nursing. It was awarded to Lizzie Jelly, according to the book plate, for regular Attendance and Good Behaviour during at the Old Meeting Sunday School, Mansfield.

The book’s author H. F. Gethen was known as ‘Sister Queen’ of the London Hospital, and also worked as a nurse at Victoria Hospital for Children. Gethen based the books’ contents on real events, and as she explains in the preface, ‘tried to weave into story-form some of the incidents which daily occur in hospitals for children’.

The book boasts three illustrations by G. Demain Hammon, British painter and book illustrator. The first is titled ‘Father say’s he’ll always lift his hat when he sees any nurse’. Published nearly 130 years ago it paints an interesting picture.

However, this was not the author’s first book on the subject as she co-authored with Honnor Morten, Tales of the Children’s Ward if you’re curious a digitised copy can be found at the Wellcome Collection.