TWO hundred years ago there was no such thing as a professional nurse.
If anything, it was a casual occupation which attracted impoverished and unskilled women - often prostitutes - who saw it as an easy way to earn some “gin money”.
Some did not even wait until their work was over, getting disgracefully drunk on the hospital wards during night shifts.
“This was pre-1850s,” said Dr Kate Stevens, a consultant nephrologist in Glasgow.
“When nursing started out it tended to be people who were ‘also rans’ might be the best description. Often it was people who were in prostitution.
“Nursing wasn’t a profession. They didn’t nurse the way they nurse now. They weren’t caring for sick people.
“They were often drunk. They’d be bribed and given threepence to buy themselves some gin - and that would encourage them to give slightly better care.
“These were people who turned up, stoked the fire, mopped the floors, gave the patients some food.
“Then there were the night nurses, which was the worst job ever. They would have to be hidden in cupboards sometimes because they were absolutely plastered on the job and they’d be carried out in the morning.
“It was really an excuse to sit around and have a few drinks.”
READ MORE: Joseph Lister, X-rays and nursing - how Glasgow Royal Infirmary changed medicine
The transformation of nursing - in Scotland and around the world - can be credited in large part to Glasgow Royal Infirmary's pioneering first matron, Rebecca Strong.
A widowed single mother who had trained under Florence Nightingale in London, Mrs Strong initially served as matron at Dundee Royal Infirmary from 1874 before taking up the newly created post at Glasgow's oldest hospital in 1879, aged 36.
It was there that she formed a strong friendship with acclaimed surgeon William Macewen - renowned for performing the world's first successful operation to remove a brain tumour at the GRI in 1879.
“There were a lot of theories about why they were such allies, but he was very keen to ensure that antisepsis techniques were applied," said Dr Stevens, co-founder of the charity Friends of GRI which is set to celebrate the achievements of Rebecca Strong and other groundbreaking GRI females during a series of 'Women's Week' online events, starting on Monday.
READ MORE: William Macewen - the pioneering Glasgow surgeon behind the world's breakthrough brain tumour op
She added: "[Macewen] believed that for him to do the best surgery he really needed to have the best nursing staff around him.
"It didn’t matter how clean he was - if he was using gloves and carbolic acid - if the nurses were dirty and drunk, the surgery wasn’t really going to be a success.”
Over the course of her career at the GRI - she retired in 1907 - Mrs Strong fought to improve the conditions for nurses and single-handedly moulded it into a serious and accredited profession.
“She completely revolutionised nursing," said Dr Stevens.
"Florence Nightingale obviously started the whole thing off, but Rebecca Strong really transformed things up here.
"Along with William McEwen she launched what was called ‘block training’ for nurses. It was a way of allowing them to work on the ward and also to educate them, so they got nurse training in terms of physiology, anatomy, but also of looking after patients and ways of making sure they performed procedures and changed dressings in a clean environment to minimise infections.
“When she first arrived it was dirty. The nurses didn’t have proper breaks, there was no discipline, no regimented regime on the wards, they didn’t have a uniform.
"By the time she left in 1907 there was a nursing school and people were getting certificates for their qualifications.
“What she achieved was really nothing short of phenomenal. She described herself as a ‘troublesome woman’ - but there’s no way she could have achieved what she did without being a troublesome woman. She was like a dog with a bone.
“When managers said ‘no’ she went back and back and back: ‘I need time for my staff’; ‘they need to have proper rest’; ‘they need holidays’; ‘we want a nurses’ home’.
"In fact she left the Royal when they refused to build a nurses’ home - then came back once it was built. She was so incensed that they weren’t getting what she felt was necessary.
“Her methods in terms of nurse training are now used worldwide."
Among those delighted to see her remembered this week is David Geyer, her 92-year-old great-grandson who lives in Kilcreggan, near Helensburgh.
Even now, he remembers her as a formidable character.
Mr Geyer, who is originally from Yorkshire, said: "I remember her coming to see us in Wakefield, where we lived, in the summer of 1939 - not long before the war broke out. I was 10.
"We went to the railway station to meet her and you can imagine this station - mid-morning, not much of colour - and then out steps Rebecca Strong from the carriage, dressed up to the nines in the most beautiful clothing.
"She strode towards us, fit as a fiddle aged 95. She was quite amazing."
In retirement she had become a globetrotting lecturer in nursing, often visiting North America.
That visit to Wakefield, however, travelling from her then-home in Chester, was the last time Mr Geyer saw his great-grandmother. She died in 1944, aged 100.
He recalls being aware of her as "a famous nurse", but said it was not something she or the family really discussed.
"It wasn’t a subject brought up in conversation," said Mr Geyer, one of three surviving great-grandsons.
“We’re all very pleased that she’s being remembered. It would be a pity if she disappeared without somebody singing her praises.”
READ MORE: Lindsey Fitzharris on life, death and surgery in the 19th Century
Women's Week will also celebrate the contribution of the Dorcas Society, a charity founded at the GRI in 1863 by Beatrice Clugston and journalist Annie Church to provide basic comforts and visits to patients isolating during the cholera epidemic.
“They spoke to the wives of the doctors working at the Royal and basically said ‘how can you sit in your posh living rooms when your husbands’ patients are in dire need of basics?'," said Dr Hilary Wilson, a consultant rheumatologist and co-founder of the Friends of GRI.
“When the patients came into hospital their clothes were often fumigated and burnt, and then they were left to go back out into the street with very little warm clothing so they would end up back at the Royal.
"These were people without relatives to visit them."
Ms Clugston raised funds for the Dorcas Society through bazaars and fetes, including one at Kibble Palace in 1875 which raised £14,000 to open a convalescent home - now demolished - in Broomhill.
"She was a revolutionary woman," said Dr Wilson. "She gave away all her possessions. She didn’t have any money left at the end of her life such that her friends had to buy her an annuity so that she had some income."
The Dorcas tradition was continued by Mabel McKinley, who visited patients in hospital after the First World War and established the Mabel's tearoom at GRI whose profits still go to the charity.
“They provide equipment for the wards, they provide clothing, they supply artificial limbs to patients," said Dr Wilson.
"Only yesterday one of my patients had to get a pair of joggers, a T-shirt and some shoes ‘from the Dorcas room’ - so we still have that every day at the Royal."
As for being a woman, in the modern-day world of medicine, Professor Jackie Taylor - the first ever female president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow - says "persistence and determination" remain important, but strongly advocates "nurturing" talent and having more females in leadership roles.
Prof Taylor, a consultant geriatrician who has trained and worked at the GRI herself, added that there was "silent expectation" as a junior doctor that she would move on into general practice.
She said: "When I said ‘no I would like to stay in hospital medicine’ there was surprise. That gives me hope though because that shows how much things have changed - it isn’t assumed that every female doctor will go into general practice.
"Things are changing, we are making progress. In my own career, if I wanted to have a family - I have two grown up children now - the options to work flexibly really weren’t there and that was tough because it was a case of coming back and training full time, or taking a long career break - or potentially leaving."
READ MORE: More than half of female surgeons encounter sexism in the workplace
Nonetheless, Prof Taylor notes that in some surgical specialties such as orthopaedics only 10% of consultants are female.
"We are actually seeing higher numbers of women go into training in surgical specialties but we’re not keeping them and taking them all the way through to a consultant post
"Sometimes the culture can be an issue.We’ve worked really hard in the past 20-30 years to improve the flexibility of training and work patterns, but there is no doubt that there is more that we could do."
Online events during Women's Week are open to the public.
For more information visit https://friendsofgri.org/womens-week/ or follow @FriendsofGRI on Twitter.
You can donate to the Friends of GRI charity on https://www.justgiving.com/friendsofgri
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