For Lena Hunt, “it was a great adventure for me to travel all that way on my own. I had quite a long rough journey and it all seemed very busy and bewildering.”

Lucy Martin-Burnham left Jamaica in 1951. “Following a discussion with my mother, I decided to go to England to do my nurse training, and she financed the fare. I was given the address of a friend who was working at Amersham General Hospital in Buckinghamshire. I wrote to this address and matron wrote to me to go to an interview at the Ministry of Health in Jamaica. I wrote back to say I am on my way to visit a friend in England and will come and see her in person and I got an interview … I boarded the ship at Port Antonio and … travelled on Elders and Fyfe. It was a small boat with 12 passengers. I was on the boat for 14 days. I was the only black person and found it a little strange. It was a mixture of excitement in that I was going in uncharted waters but there was a job at the end.”

Trinidadian Gloria Falode left the Caribbean in 1960, when she was 23. A friend had given her the address of a cousin in England. She had

Joyce Bleasdille-Lumsden (left) on a boat to England, March 1960

already written to Hammersmith Hospital, who asked her to come up for an interview. Her mother “said no, what would happen if you want over there and failed then where would you stay … you had to listen to reason. Saxondale Hospital … wrote back to me and I showed it to my mother and she thought it was a good idea. After sending the forms and a picture they accepted me, they told me what my salary

would be and that I would be living in the nurses’ home, so once my mother saw that and then I told her about my friend Shirley, who had a cousin there … My big brother Patrick booked my passage to come over … They said you must have flannelette pyjamas, so my aunt made me some … I suppose when you’re young you don’t think about such a great distance … The journey lasted 14 days.”