ABSTRACT
This chapter explores overseas influences on nurse training in England. It explains why Roman Catholic models of nursing had impact on early attempts to provide structured training for nurses. In contrast, the Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth, Germany, a highly successful institution which trained large numbers of nurses who met the requirements of Victorian respectability, was profoundly influential. While Elizabeth Fry's nursing institution made real headway in developing respectable nurses, the Fry nurses were primarily domiciliary nurses. Nightingale had been unable to establish a training school at the Harley Street hospital, and neither institution was able to produce large numbers of skilled nurses the teaching hospitals required. Kaiserswerth did train large numbers of competent nurses whom it sent all over the world, but it was a German institution and the model did not take root in English soil. At mid-century, most people considered nursing a disreputable occupation. Yet real improvements had been made, as the Crimean War in 1854-56 would reveal.
