ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at nursing practice in the early nineteenth century and explores three structural problems which made it almost impossible to deliver nursing care efficiently. The first problem was the matron's lack of authority and nursing knowledge. The second was the pre-industrial work ethic of the early nineteenth-century workforce. Nursing at the London was probably better than in the other hospitals because there was a resident professional administrator who took a lively interest in the nurses. With the exception of the kitchen maids, the assistant and night nurses had the lowest status of any hospital employee. The only instance where the author found comments on the performance of a nursing staff as a whole was in 1824, when the House Committee at the London Hospital awarded gratuities and raises to their nurses. Relying on the received wisdom, Peter Stanley asserted that there is abundant evidence of competent nursing before 1860.
