Rushden Research Group: Nurses about 1900

Rushden Echo & Argus, Jan 21^st 1949, transcribed by Kay Collins

Nurses about 1900

The Nurses identified by Mrs Cooper:
back row (left to right): Mrs. Waring, —, Mrs. E. Williams (nee Miriam Perkins), Winnipeg,
Miss Barnes, of Higham Ferrers, Miss Scott, Mrs. H. J. Cooper (nee Mary Bettles), Toronto,
Miss Margetts and Mrs, Alderman, Centre row (left to right): Mrs, Beardsmore, Miss Baiiey,
Miss Clark, Mrs. Mann (Lady Superintendent), Dr. C. R. Owen (lecturer),
Miss Cunnington (First Officer), —, —, Mrs Mole. Front row: —, —, —, Miss Wooding.

A faded photograph sent from Canada and wrapped neatly in tissue paper has been received at our Rushden office. The picture tells the story behind a paragraph printed in the "Echo and Argus" feature "In Days Gone By" and read by Mrs. H. J. Cooper, of Toronto, Ontario. Mrs. Cooper regularly reads the "Echo and Argus," but when she glanced through her favourite feature a few weeks ago she had a surprise. "I remember that," she said to herself, and wrote to tell us all about it. She had read a paragraph stating that a group of ladies had passed a nursing examination 50 years ago. "It happens," she writes, "that the ladies mentioned passed the exam, just a little while before me. Later all the successful candidates had their photograph taken." Mrs. Cooper identifies a number of nursing sisters. She herself appears as Miss Mary Bettles, sixth from the left on the back row.

Mrs. Cooper tells us that she was a member of the Rushden St. John Nursing Sisters until leaving England in 1905. On arrival at Winnipeg she took a short course in a hospital. She married the following year. Her brother, Mr. Charles R. Bettles, was a St. John Ambulance man. He served in the South African War in 1900 and died serving with a hospital unit, being buried at Bloemfontein. The Rushden Brigade of that day put up a granite monument to him and another Rushden man (Arthur Ellis). Mrs Cooper concludes: "The St. John Ambulance was really the pioneer of Red Cross work as it is practised in modern war. However, there is still plenty of room for the services of both nursing sisters and ambulance men in peace time." She identifies the Nursing Sisters - above.

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