A range of issues, from regulator fees to pensions, made the news in 1924

A list of topics perhaps not unfamiliar to the nursing staff of today. The front pages of the 7 June 1924 issue reported across this wide range of issues, rather than focusing on just one in the way that it had tended to do previously with its headlines.

Among the articles, Nursing Times reported that no less than three questions about nursing and midwifery had been asked by MPs in the House of Commons on 4 June, and that nurses in Bromley in Greater London had written to the General Nursing Council for England and Wales to protest about the level of its examination fees.

Another story detailed the unfortunate financial situation of a second assistant matron who, despite her 26.5 years of service, found that only 15 years of it contributed to her pension. This was because she had unwittingly chosen to contract out of legislation on pensions at the beginning of her career.

In Scotland, the “big problem” confronting mental health matrons was the “difficulty of finding a sufficient number of new recruits of the right kind to staff their hospitals”. “In no other branch of the nursing world is the girl blessed with quick intelligence, observation, resourcefulness, and personality, more needed than in mental nursing,” claimed Nursing Times.

Another story reported on the difficulties that the Worcester Infirmary was encountering in recruiting a new matron, most of which seemed to stem from the small size of the accommodation that accompanied the post. The problem had led the hospital’s executive committee to grudgingly agree to provide an extra bathroom and an office “distinct from the matron’s sitting room”.

Elsewhere, the chair of the North Middlesex Poor Law Hospital Committee, “strongly criticised the attitude of some medical men towards nurses”, arguing that they had done very little to support nursing staff when it came to gaining better pay. “The scale of salaries for nurses was a disgrace,” he told a conference, revealing a view no doubt popular in 2024. Explaining his point on pay further, he asked: “Where was a nurse at 55 years of age? Yet by that time a doctor was fairly prosperous.”

Last of all, there was a report on the visit of the King and Queen of Italy to the Italian Hospital in London, which had “naturally delighted” nursing staff there. The Italian Hospital was founded as a charitable institution in 1884 in a house on Queen Square in Bloomsbury before being extended. It did not join the NHS, however, and ultimately closed in 1991 because it could not offer a full range of services. The hospital outlasted the Italian monarchy though, which was abolished in 1946. Its buildings have been taken over by Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust.

Further on in the issue, a short piece titled ‘Incurable help fund’ dealt with the founding of the St Monica Home of Rest in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol. It noted that the home would be for the benefit of “gentlefolk in poor circumstances suffering from certain chronic or incurable ailments”. It highlighted that, while the home would not be ready until the end of 1924, financial assistance was available to a limited number of people and cases were ready to be considered.

By coincidence, last month, the ceremonial lamp at the 2024 Florence Nightingale Commemorative Service was carried by a current employee of what is now called the St Monica Trust. Emily Pimm, who qualified as a nurse in 2006, works as a social care deputy manager at John Wills House Care Home. The trust’s original home – a grade II listed building – finally opened in 1925 and now forms part of its Cote Lane retirement village. Ms Pimm is the first adult social care nurse to carry the lamp at the annual service to celebrate nursing and its founder.

Meanwhile, among the adverts was one from Dae Health Laboratories of Bolsover Street, London, claiming that a “remarkable new cream removes hair better than depilatories”. The new cream in question, it turns out, was Veet, a product that is still widely available today. Whether the advert would fall foul of modern advertising rules is another question though. It stated that the cream “melts hair away just as heat melts snow”. “Entirely satisfactory results are guaranteed in every case or your money is refunded,” it boldly promised.