Sunderland’s Poor Law Nurses and the Professionalisation of Nursing: 1834–1900

Abstract

This article will demonstrate that poor law nurses made a major contribution to the professionalisation of nurses. It focuses on the northern Durham unions over the second half of the nineteenth century with special attention given to the Sunderland union, the largest urban union in the county. Using national and local records this article examines the changing face of the nurse in the union workhouse infirmary. It examines the use of paupers as nurses in the early decades of the New Poor Law and the gradual move towards the use and payment of non-pauper nurses. The research will show that guardians increasingly recognised the need for trained nurses to care for the sick which resulted from medical advances in the second half of the nineteenth century, and until 1897 the central authorities had no policy on nurses or nurse training leaving decisions on nurse developments at local level. This article examines the development of nurse training at the Sunderland workhouse hospital, a service that received praise in a parliamentary report. It is argued that the nurse training programme was an important step towards the professionalisation of nurses.