ABSTRACT
The campaign to reform nursing which began in the mid-nineteenth century was less an attempt to redefine nursing work than one to reform the nurse’s character and skills through reconstructing the class basis of the occupation. Moral rather than technical attributes of nurses were singled out for criticism. Indeed the attack upon Sarah Gamp and her contemporaries can be seen as an extension of the wider campaign to reform working-class morals. To understand why Mrs Gamp and her co-workers provided such a convenient and powerful symbol for reform, we have first to appreciate the nature of her success and the consequent threat which she and her counterparts posed to reformers. There were three major interest groups who conspired to squeeze Sarah Gamp and her like out of the health care market: medical practitioners, religious sisterhoods and nurses keen to expand employment opportunities for educated women.1 As this chapter will show, an examination of the discredited features of Sarah Gamp helps to explain the emergence of a consensus between these groups of reformers. This chapter considers the allegations made against nurses and the interests of the various participants in the discourse of denigration.
