ABSTRACT
Emily Anne Smythe, née Beaufort, addressed the matter of nurses from a position of authority. In 1874 Smythe published Hospital Training for Ladies: AnAppeal to the Hospital Boards in England (1874), which advocated making nursing training available to ladies who wished to pursue nursing on a part-time basis. The publication may have echoed Smythe’s desire for occupation but was out of sympathy with most of the other nursing campaigners who lobbied for improved training that enabled women to pursue full-time nursing careers. The formation and operation of district nursing associations relied on subscriptions to pay for training, allow salaries and provide accommodation for nurses. In the twenty years after Smythe’s paper, district nursing became increasingly well financed and organized as nursing associations established provident schemes. Smythe acknowledges differing standards of cleanliness and domesticity but locates these as intrinsic to the sick bodies in need of the nurse’s care and the larger social body that funded such schemes.
