Eva Luckes
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Matron Luckes CBE RRC DStJ |
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Portrait of 1914
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| Born |
Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes 8 July 1854 Newnham, Gloucestershire, England |
| Died | 16 February 1919 (aged 64) |
Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes CBE RRC DStJ (8 July 1854 – 16 February 1919) was Matron of The London Hospital from 1880 to 1919.
Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes was born in Exeter, Devon on 8 July 1854 into an upper-middle-class family. Her father, Henry Richard Luckes, was a banker who had established a comfortable home for his family in Newnham, Gloucestershire. Miss Luckes, the eldest of three daughters, was educated at Malvern, Cheltenham College and Dresden. She suffered from some physical disablement and had a horse to help her travel about the countryside. After finishing her education she returned to Newnham and helped her mother run the house and visited the sick of the parish. It was this that developed her interest in nursing.
Luckes began her training in September 1876 when she entered the Middlesex Hospital as a paying probationer. Unfortunately, she left after three months, finding the work too strenuous. This did not prevent her from trying again and after a rest, she started at the Westminster Hospital, completing her training in August 1878. She was appointed night sister at the London Hospital, where she stayed for three months before becoming lady superintendent at the Manchester General Hospital for Sick Children in Pendlebury. She resigned from this post after apparently clashing with the medical committee for attempting to instigate reforms in the standard of nurse training.
After serving for a short period at the Hospital for Sick Children Great Ormond Street; (Great Ormond Street Hospital), Luckes successfully applied for the position of Matron at The London Hospital, where she had begun her professional career. At 26, Luckes was the youngest of the five candidates interviewed and several of the Committee thought her 'too young and too pretty' and were wary of appointing someone with relatively little experience. However, the confidence of the committee members was well founded as she set about introducing a programme of reforms to improve the standard of nursing at The London, although it should be remembered that a Sub-Committee, to review the system, had been appointed in the previous year.
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