What's New: January 2024
January 11, 2024
Welcome to the 106th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds nine new articles accompanied by two portrait likenesses, with a special focus on nursing lives. From January 2024, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford DNB) offers biographies of 64,910 men and women who have shaped the British past, contained in 62,496 articles. 12,025 biographies include a portrait image of the subject – researched in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, London. Read the introduction now.
Most public libraries across the UK subscribe to the Oxford DNB, which means that you can access the complete dictionary for free via your local library. Libraries offer 'remote access' that enables you to log in at any time at home (or anywhere you have internet access). Elsewhere, the Oxford DNB is available online in schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions worldwide. Full details of participating British public libraries, and how to gain access to the complete dictionary, are available.
|
Carter, Gladys Beaumont (1887–1959), midwife and nurse |
|
Darley [formerly Dale], Thomas (1853–1919), mental health nurse |
|
Mackenzie [née Chalmers], Elizabeth Chalmers [Eliza] (1816–1892), superintendent of nurses |
|
Parrish, Alan Albert (1937–2013), nurse and social rights activist |
|
Parsons, Louisa (1855–1916), nurse |
|
Skeet, Muriel Hilda (1926–2006), nurse and nursing researcher |
Introduction to the update by Stuart Wildman
This latest set of biographies of nurses included in this update is the culmination of a partnership since 2020 between the Oxford DNB and the History of Nursing Forum at the Royal College of Nursing. The aim has been to increase the coverage of nursing in the dictionary. In all, 44 biographies of nurses have been published in this period, and there are now over one hundred nurses in the dictionary, ranging from iconic women, such as Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole, and Edith Cavell, to less widely known nurses, male as well as female, who have made a positive impact on the profession, health care, and the nation. These nurses demonstrated leadership and expertise in areas such as clinical practice, policy making, management, education, and research. Many of these were pioneers in their own field and have had a lasting impact on the profession and encompass all branches of practice – adult, mental health, children, and learning disability nursing.
Nurses included in the dictionary reflect the changing nature of British society. Many of the early pioneers and leaders were from middle and even upper-class families. With the exception of mental health and learning disability fields, nursing became almost exclusively a female occupation by the end of the nineteenth century. Nurses are now drawn from a variety of backgrounds. This latest cohort includes three working-class men from three different areas of practice, and one, Alan Parrish, is the first learning disability nurse to be included in the dictionary. Today men can be found in all areas of practice, making up about ten percent of the workforce. The impact of migration can also be seen within the profession. The contribution of women fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe in the 1930s to nursing practice and research featured in biographies published in 2020 as has the impact of those nurses from the Caribbean known as the ‘Windrush generation’. Daphne Steele, the first black nurse to be appointed a matron within the NHS, is among those whose lives have been added in the current project. Perhaps entries in the future will document the influence of nurses from the Philippines, Africa, and India upon the health services in the UK during our own time.
This final group of entries span a period of over 150 years, filling gaps in our knowledge about the early days of professional nursing in areas such as mental health, military and naval nursing as well as the export of the Nightingale ‘model’ to America. Examining the lives of Gladys Carter and Margaret Auld gives insights into the professionalization of nursing and the movement toward educating nurses in universities. Finally, where there are new health challenges, nurses will be found at the forefront of care and treatment, as witnessed by Muriel Skeet’s work in war-torn Africa and Richard Wells’s practice in caring for people with HIV and AIDS.
Stuart Wildman is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and was the chair of the History of Nursing Forum, Royal College of Nursing, up until December 2023. His research focuses on the history of nursing in the hospital and home during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
January 2024: summary of new articles
The superintendent of nurses, Elizabeth Chalmers [Eliza] Mackenzie [née Chalmers] (1816–1892), born in Glasgow the daughter of the Church of Scotland minister and social reformer Thomas Chalmers, was married to a Free Church of Scotland minister. Following the outbreak of the Crimean war in 1854 she responded to an appeal by the Admiralty for nurses to assist at the temporary Royal Navy hospital at Therapia on the Bosphorous. After a period of training at the Middlesex Hospital, and accompanied by her husband, she led a party of nurses to Therapia, arriving early in 1855. Although her stay at Therapia was short, and she retired to private life, her efficient management of the hospital impressed the Admiralty and demonstrated that trained nurses could improve care in naval hospitals, paving the way for the uniformed naval service in 1884. Widowed when her Irish-born army surgeon husband died in the Abyssinian campaign, Jane Cecilia Deeble [née Egan] (1827–1913) undertook nurse training at the Nightingale Training School, St Thomas’s Hospital, before taking up her appointment as superintendent at the Royal Victorian Military Hospital, Netley, where her work secured the survival of the army’s female nursing service. In 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu war, she led a party of nurses to South Africa and in 1883 was awarded the Royal Red Cross. Born in Devon the illegitimate daughter of a lacemaker from a family of agricultural labourers, Louisa Parsons (1855–1916) was in domestic service before embarking on nursing training at the Nightingale School at St Thomas’s. As a military nurse she joined General Wolseley’s campaign in Sudan in 1885, for which she was awarded the Royal Red Cross, and moved to the USA where, as superintendent of nurses, she set up the nurse training school at the University of Maryland in 1892. After undertaking hospital work for the American National Red Cross during the Spanish-American war, she nursed in a British military hospital in Bloemfontein during the Second South African war, before returning to England, where she was honoured with a military funeral. The mental health nurse Thomas Darley [formerly Dale] (1853-1919), born in Ebberston, North Yorkshire, the illegitimate son of a servant, grew up on a farm before becoming an attendant at The York Retreat, a Quaker institution regarded as one of the foremost mental health care institutions in Europe. His superior qualities were recognized and he became head attendant in 1892. The example which he set represented a model of the qualities needed to run an effective and compassionate service for the mentally ill. The midwife and nurse Gladys Beaumont Carter (1887–1959), born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, the daughter of a general practitioner, studied sociology at the London School of Economics and graduated from London University before qualifying as a midwife and state registered nurse after training at King’s College Hospital. She became an advocate for restructuring the nursing profession, publishing A New Deal for Nurses (1939), which criticized the lack of change since 1860. She was an advocate of university training for nurses and was a member of a working party to establish a nursing department at Edinburgh University, which opened in 1956 as the first such academic department of nursing in Europe. The nurse and nursing researcher Muriel Hilda Skeet (1926–2006), born in Colchester the daughter of a tailor’s cutter, trained at the Middlesex Hospital before embarking on an international nursing career. She returned to England in 1962 and undertook nursing research, advocating the need for nursing practice to have an evidence base. She published extensively. As a consultant and adviser to the World Health Organization from 1969 to the early 1990s she worked in war-torn and famine-stricken countries. Margaret Gibson Auld (1932-2010), born in Cardiff the daughter of a shipping manager, qualified after training at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and trained as a midwife at Cardiff and Blackburn, becoming a staff midwife at Cardiff Maternity Hospital. After completing a course for senior nurses at Edinburgh University she became matron of the Simpson Memorial Maternity Hospital at Edinburgh. She went on to gain a postgraduate degree at Edinburgh University for research in nursing manpower planning. Appointed chief nursing officer for Scotland in 1977, she took pride in the fact that Scotland produced 50 per cent of nurse graduates in the UK. The nurse and social rights activist Alan Albert Parrish (1937–2013), the son of a former coalminer, was born in St Albans where he was a cathedral chorister. He trained as a mental health nurse at Harperbury Hospital, Shenley, Hertfordshire, and qualified as a state registered nurse at St Albans City Hospital. He returned to Harperbury Hospital, where he became senior charge nurse and revolutionized the quality of care and support provided. In 1977 he was appointed director of nursing at St Lawrence’s Hospital in Caterham, then the largest learning disability hospital in the United Kingdom, from where in 1983 he was appointed nurse adviser for learning disability nursing at the Royal College of Nursing College. He was an advocate for the closure of learning disability hospitals. An architect for community-based service provision for people with learning disabilities, he promoted the cause for integration, participation, and human rights for this client group. Born in Leeds, Yorkshire, the son of a fish frier, Malcolm William James [Richard] Wells (1941-1993) undertook registered mental nurse training at York School of Nursing and went on to qualify as a registered general nurse in 1976. He was an outspoken student nurse leader and was active in the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. Moving to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, he became an authority on oncology nursing. In the early 1980s AIDS nursing became part of his remit and he was appointed to the Department of Health Expert Advisory Group on AIDS. He also chaired the working party which produced the nursing guidelines on the management of patients in hospital and in the community diagnosed with AIDS. In 1991 he made known his own HIV status. A research centre at the University of West London was established in his name.
The Oxford DNB is updated regularly throughout the year, giving you access to the most up-to-date and accurate information available. Nearly all public libraries in England, Scotland, and Wales—and all in Northern Ireland—subscribe to the Oxford DNB. This means you can access tens of thousands of biographies, free, via your local library—anywhere, anytime. Full access to all biographies is also available by individual subscription.
Discover a full list of entries added this year.
