Collection charting the development of nursing education at St George's and related institutions from the 19th century to the present day.
The collection includes
• Student registers, training and examination records, prospectuses and syllabi
• Administrative records, including committee minutes, reports, rules and regulations
• Publications and printed material such as newsletters and journals, including those published by St George’s Nurses’ League (1952-2014)
• Papers, photographs and artefacts by St George’s Nurses’ League
• Personal papers, memoirs and memorabilia from individual nurses, including papers of matron Dame Muriel Powell (c.1910s-1970s)
• Photographs, including student photographs, group photographs and personal photo albums by nurses
• Artefacts and objects, including clothing such as nurses’ caps, badges and medical instruments
• Papers from the Joint Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and SGUL relating to nursing (1880-1980), including
• ‘Nurses’ Voices’: Oral histories (interviews with St George’s nurses and midwives) and related documentation, recorded in 2010, documenting nursing at St George’s 1930-1990
From in-job training at the hospital, nursing education was gradually formalised during the latter half of the 19th century. From 1882 onwards, probationer nurses were offered lectures by the medical school and hospital staff; these lectures developed into a more formal syllabus, becoming compulsory for probationers in the 1890s, and the first formal examinations were introduced in 1894. The archive charts the development of nursing education from the late 19th century to the 21st century, including important changes in the demographics of the nursing staff, including the Windrush generation.
The collection encompasses training of nurses at St George’s and related institutions; for instance, nursing training at Victoria Hospital for Children and Grove Hospital were merged with St George’s School of Nursing in the 1950s, leading to the establishment of a branch of the School of Nursing at Tooting, where St George’s Hospital and Medical School (later university) moved in the 1970s from Hyde Park Corner, central London. Nursing education at St George’s is currently offered by the Faculty
of Health, Social Care and Education, a joint faculty of Kingston University and St George’s, University of London.