ABSTRACT
This description of lively play in a children’s hospital was written by Sister Grace Jennings Carmichael, one of Melbourne’s earliest formally trained children’s nurses, who worked in the Melbourne Hospital for Sick Children, now the Royal Children’s Hospital, during 1888-1890. Her descriptions of everyday life in the hospital were based on notes written during her days and nights in the wards, caring for children from Melbourne’s slum areas who were suffering from diseases such as diphtheria, tuberculosis of the hip or the dreaded typhoid. The extracts reveal a tolerant, and even playful, attitude to the children playing games on the ward and their
unorthodox way of keeping in touch with their friends, and an acceptance that this is part of their normal lives, even when ill or suffering.
