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Archival description
Grove Fever Hospital
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St George's Nursing Collection

  • 406 NU
  • Collection
  • c.1830-2015

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 syllabuses
  • Administrative records, including committee minutes, reports, rules and regulations
  • Publications and printed material including books, newsletters and journals
  • Papers, photographs and artefacts from 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
  • Artefacts and objects, including items of nurses' uniform, badges, medals, and medical instruments
  • ‘Nurses’ Voices’ oral history project: interviews with over 100 former St George’s nurses and midwives (and related documentation), recorded 2003-2008

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, such as the arrival of 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.

St George's Hospital Medical School, London

Grove Hospital

Reproduction of a single black and white photograph of a group of staff and patients (holding a banner from '4B ward') outside the Grove Hospital, Tooting.

Note that this image dates from before the Grove was absorbed into St George's in the 1950s (but after it had dropped the 'Fever' from its original name of Grove Fever Hospital); for later images of the Grove site in its St George's era, see NU/6/2/1/6.

Grove Hospital

Nurse training records relating to the Grove Hospital (originally the Grove Fever Hospital), Tooting. Note that the Grove became a branch of St George's in 1954.

The records are written on a London County Council form ('Nursing Service – Record of Training'; after 1950 the LCC heading changed to Wandsworth Hospital Group) and include the following information: name, date of birth, parents'/guardian's address, education, dates of training and leaving, lecture attendance, examination marks, ward reports, and conduct marks. A majority of the records also have additional Quarterly Ward Report (or 'Sister's Report on Probationer Nurse') forms inserted, and sometimes other documents (correspondence relating to requests for references, written coursework, Fever Training schedules, etc).

Grove Hospital

File labelled 'Fever and Tropical Fevers' containing the following:

  • correspondence between Grove Hospital sister tutor Margaret Thomas and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases (enclosing syllabus of lectures), Jun 1957
  • correspondence from the General Nursing Council, 1952-1957
  • transcripts and correspondence from former trainees, 1949-1953
  • receipts for books and stationery, 1940s-1950s
  • envelope labelled 'Fever Papers' containing GNC exam papers for fever nurses, 1955-1959
  • quarterly ward report forms and blank record of training form, 1940-1952
  • test paper from trainee nurse Grace Bradford, c.1940s

Nurse duty record books and index

Two-volume set of records for individual nurses (contained in hard-backed binders) with accompanying typed alphabetical index of names. Each record includes dates of entry/departure, details of time spent on duty in different sections (Medical, Surgical, 'Special', and Night Duty), dates of holidays and sick leave, and sometimes dates of examination passes. The 'Special' column includes secondments to other hospitals in the St George's group, including Tite Street (Victoria Hospital for Children) and the Grove Hospital.

The date range for the volumes is 1949-1957, but the first contains an inserted copy of a reference from 1981.

'A London Assistant Nurse Training School' series

Set of black and white photographs in a series entitled 'A London Assistant Nurse Training School', taken for the Ministry of Health in 1958 and issued by the Central Office of Information, with explanatory captions affixed to the reverse of each print. They include shots of pupil assistant nurses studying and interacting with patients.

The box these photographs are stored in is labelled 'Complete Set of Photographs: Grove Hospital 1958' (with a note stating that it was 'found during [a] clear out', 1997), indicating that they were taken at the Grove Hospital site, which was by 1958 the Tooting branch of St George's. The box also contains six photographs of an ambulance which, while also seemingly taken at Tooting, do not appear to belong to the 'Assistant Nurse' set.

NV009 – Gwendoline Gardiner

Ref no: NV009
Name: Gwendoline Gardiner
Dates at St George's: 1942-1963

Digital image, copyright form and transcript of audio recording with Carol McCubbin as interviewer. No digitised audio recording present.

Image description:
PH754 – Miss Gwendoline Olive Gardiner OBE: Gardiner in uniform, c.1940s?

NV022 – Rachel McHugh

Ref no: NV022
Name: Rachel McHugh
Dates at St George's: 1955-1958

Digital images, copyright form, audio files and transcript of interview conducted by Angela Fothergill.

Image descriptions:
PH019 – Staff nurse William King ward, Hyde Park Corner
PH020 – The Grove3: Showing 'Frederick Hewitt' ward (upstairs) at the Grove
PH022 – Before the ball on King's Ward
PH024 – The Grove 1956a: Typical ward block at the Grove
PH026 – Cumberland House: Exterior of Cumberland House, Earl's Court. PTS School
PH028 – Possil House: Exterior of Possil House, Nurses' Home at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon
PH029 – Christmas3: Christmas "on theatre". Breakfast in "North".
PH129 – Christmas Baby Decorated Crib 1960: St George's Hospital SW1 Christmas Crib 1960 Baby Sadgrove
PH130 – Copy of Christmas baby crib 1960: St George's Hospital SW1 Christmas Day 1960. Baby Paul Philip Sadgrove, 8lbs 13ozs Born 10.20am. S/M Rachel Mapperley (McHugh).

NV058 – Margaret Gardner

Ref no: NV058
Name: Margaret Gardner
Dates at St George's: 1949-1952, 1954-1955, 1957-1960

Copyright form, audio files and transcript of interview conducted by Jenny Beckingsale

NV065 – Angela Haines

Ref no: NV065
Name: Angela Haines (née Speller)
Dates at St George's: 1954-1961

Digital image, copyright form, audio files and transcript of interview conducted by unidentified interviewer.

Image description:
PH716 – Angela Haines: Angela Haines in uniform during PTS [Preliminary Training School], c.1950s

NV135 – Vera Millard

Ref no: NV135
Name: Vera Millard (née Arnold)
Dates at St George's: 1937-1941

Digital images, copyright form, audio files and transcript of interview conducted by Janet Bocking.

Image descriptions:
PH085 – Dunkirk survivors at the Grove, 1940;
PH086 – Vera Millard & colleagues at 14 Courtyard, 1940;
PH087 – Vera Millard at hospital, 1940;
PH088 – Christmas 1937 Rookie;
PH089 – Vera Millard outside A Block, Grove Hospital, 1940;
PH090 – Grove Hospital [with nurse in front];
PH749 – Vera Millard: Vera Millard in uniform half way through training at the Grove Fever Hospital, Tooting, c. 1930s-1940s

NV098 – Susan Gollop

Ref no: NV098
Name: Susan Gollop
Dates at St George's: 1957-1963, 1965-1968, 1970-1976, 1981-1984

Copyright form, audio files and transcript of interview conducted by Chris Eberhardie

NVA162 – Daphne Chynoweth

Ref no: NVA161
Name: Daphne Chynoweth (née Kinch)
Dates at St George's: 1951-1955

Copyright form (and caveat form), audio files and transcript of interview conducted by Carol McCubbin in Adelaide, Australia