ABSTRACT
I have argued that the factory provided the organisational model for the development of the hospital and, by extension, the moral code for nurse training. Employers in factories conceived their task as one in which the habits, spirit and culture of a recalcitrant workforce had to be broken in order to mould labour to the mechanical demands of automation; defiance was to be replaced by unquestioning obedience to the ‘machine’ of disciplinary order.1 This analogy between hospital and factory would suggest that nurse training schools found their closest comparison in factory schools and the development of technical education. However, although some provision was made for girls in Mechanics Institutes, nurse training schools tended to be modelled more closely on the girls’ public school.2 As a result they shared the strengths and weaknesses of that sector.
