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Monthly nurse


A Monthly Nurse was a woman who, in 18th and 19th century England, looked after a mother, and her baby also, for the first few weeks after birth.

From far back in time the delivery of children and care of the mothers was a profession often handed down from mother to daughter, with the daughter spending many years as the pupil or apprentice with midwifery skills being shared from generation to generation. The Church supported the system by a system of licensing and required midwives to swear to certain rules relating to contraception, abortion and concealment of births and also to deliver the new born infants for baptism or in extreme cases to perform the ceremony themselves.

In the middle of the 18th century the legal status of midwives was withdrawn and the responsibility for delivery was vested in the surgeon. The work of the nurse element had to be covered for “who was to look after the baby?” Clearly the first thought that would naturally occur to a mother was that the best person to look after her baby was a woman who had had one herself. Often, the task was allotted to motherly or grandmotherly hands and, from this requirement for post natal care, the ‘monthly’ nurse originated. The Nursing Record reported that “there was little or no attempt at knowledge or instruction, and we know as a fact that ignorance, prejudice and neglect resulted in a goodly crop of errors, wrongs, and woes as regards the hapless infant”.

The term “monthly nurse” is one which is frequently used to describe the nurse who cares for lying-in cases, no doubt because such a nurse frequently remains with the patient for four weeks. The word ‘monthly’ is somewhat inaccurate, for there is no reason why the nurse’s services should not be dispensed with after ten days or retained for a much longer period. It is entirely a matter of arrangement. The Nursing Record reported that “nurses who attend the ‘artisan’ classes in their confinements as a rule pay a visit daily for ten days and then give up the case, as few working class mothers can afford to lie up for longer”.

Although ‘Registration’ was not available for women to act as midwives or monthly nurses a system of “Certification” was in being in the late 19th century and continued into the early 20th century. To qualify a candidate monthly nurse would attend a course in a lying-in hospital for four or five weeks and a midwife for up to three months. The prospective midwives and monthly nurses as a rule paid their own charges in respect of Hospital expenses and afterwards entered into practice on their own responsibility. In 1893 a Miss Gosling reported that “although the certificated monthly nurse could be relied upon as being trustworthy and efficient, there were a number of women who attend lectures for a short time and through one cause or another fail to pass their examination and obtain a certificate nevertheless enter a “Nurses Home” or open one for themselves!


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