UK women Nurse numbers in 1917

[michaeldr]

This may be less useful than I at first thought, as the description does not state that these statistics refer specifically to women nurses in military service,

but bear with me and let us imagine that it does.

What then was the comparable UK figure for women nurses in military/naval service in 1917?

 

Michael

 

 

 

[Jim Strawbridge]

Perhaps what needs to be taken into account is that nuns and similar religious orders undertook nursing duties as part of their main stream work and although not qualified did a half decent job. Nurses as we know them didn't come into being in some countries until the early 20th century. That was actually one reason that Edith Cavell went to Belgium. The Nightingale methods of antiseptic and cleanliness needed to be adopted away from a "wet cloth to mop the forehead" type of nursing.

[Marilyne]

I'd add to that the fact that even if they were at that time quite more evolved and open minded than now (yes, politically incorrect, but true), society in the Ottoman Empire frowned on WOMEN taking on the care of MEN. Today in some of these countries they simply don't… there's a big cultural gap there that explains the discrepancies.

As to UK numbers , Sue Light, in her blog tells us "Between 22,000 and 24,000 trained nurses served with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, it's Reserve and the Territorial Force Nursing Service". As you say Michael, these are the Numbers for TRAINED nurses and they would depend also on the country policy with regards to the use of women in the army.

France for example had only 3 secular nursing schools for the whole country… nurses were nuns, who had a lot of compassion and goodwill, but were often utterly useless in an operating theatre or on a medical ward.

 

M.

[michaeldr]

Marilyne & Jim,

 

Thanks for your comments

 

Interesting: 22000 to 24000 for the UK during the whole of the war

 

Regarding the training of Ottoman nurses:-

“Although the first School of Nursing for Muslim women was founded in 1925 by the Red Crescent, [The first school of nursing in the Ottoman Empire is opened by Americans in the [Admiral Bristol] American Hospital in İstanbul in 1920. Kurnaz, II. Meşrutiyet Döneminde Türk Kadını, p. 88.] Turkish women took nursing courses during the war years from October 1914 to April 1915 in the conference hall of Dârü’l-fünûn. These first women nurses were regarded as so important that even the Başkadın Efendi (the first wife of the Sultan) was invited to the commencement day of the first 30 graduates and aristocratic women started learning the profession in Bursa. On 18 March 1915, the İstanbul University Hospital (Dârü’l-fünûn Hastahânesi), which was reopened due to the war, demanded the assignment of ten of these new graduates.

[However]By 1916, there were only 24 Turkish women working as nurses in the hospitals of the capital city. The same year, seven women nurses of the Kadırga Birth Clinic (Kadırga Seririyât-ı Vilâdiyesi) were sent to the military hospitals of the 4th Army in the JerusalemDamascus region.”

 

The above quote is from https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01885891/document which was also where I found the illustration used in the opening post.

As well as nursing, this doctoral thesis looks at many and various aspects of the lives of women in Turkey during the Great War

 

regards

Michael

Edited 18 November , 2019 by michaeldr