ABSTRACT
Our folk history of nursing is dominated by two characters. The first is Sarah Gamp, the comic working-class nurse of Charles Dickens’s Martin Chutzlewit: old, fat, gin-swilling, clumsy, always thinking of her own welfare rather than that of her patients. The second character is Florence Nightingale, the ‘lady with the lamp’ who brought comfort to the wounded soldiers at Scutari Hospital during the Crimean War, who recognized the appalling state of nursing and by her efforts and example created the modern, efficient, dedicated nurse of today. In the popular culture of our society, the story of the origins of the modern nurse is the story of these two characters.1 Most grand-sweep histories of nursing are still organized around this traditional story, although their telling of it may be more subtle. They are likely, for instance, to introduce further characters, pointing out that Florence Nightingale was not the first to recognize the need for nursing reform; they may mention Elizabeth Fry and her Institute of Nursing Sisters, the St John’s House Institution for Nurses, and the French Sisters of Charity and the Béguines communities of Flanders which provided an inspiration and a model for early nursing reformers. The story remains, however, one of progress: from the gross and incompetent nurse of the Sarah Gamp type to the trained and committed nurse personified by Florence Nightingale.2
