From the age of about two, Joyce Bleasdille-Lumsden had wanted to be a nurse. “I used to make my mud dolls and put an apron and cap on their heads.” She helped to deliver her first baby when she was 10. Her great-aunt was a major influence. She “was the old lady in the village. She wasn’t a qualified midwife but if anything happened like births, or if someone was sick, they always used to get her.” Joyce was her favourite niece, and often accompanied her great-aunt, helping her with leeches and cupping. “It was my job to wash the leeches out and wash the blood from the cups. So she says to me, ‘you want to be a nurse, Mrs Norbert is having her child, let’s go down and you will see how to deliver her baby.’ So I went down there and they went to call the midwife. It was raining, her husband went with a donkey and while he was away, the midwife wasn’t there yet and the baby was delivered. My great-aunt boiled the scissors on the fire in the middle of the straw house and she cut the cord and showed me what to do. The lady had no baby clothes so I took a pillowcase and cut the neck and the sleeves and we put it on the baby.”

Louise Garvey remembers when she first knew she wanted to be a nurse: “I had an auntie that was ill and she came to see my other auntie. I can remember she had a white

dress on and white shoes on and a white cap and I can remember the uniform, it had like turned-up sleeves and she was carrying a black bag. I saw her and I thought that’s what I want to be and I’ve never strayed from that … ”

As a child, Lena Hunt “saw a film about nursing in Great Ormond Street in the town, which inspired me, and then I saw an advertisement in a women’s magazine when I was about 12 or 13 years old asking for people who were interested in doing nurse training in England. I filled it out and I received a very nice reply back saying, ‘You are a little young, but you could try again in a few years’

time.’ This I did about four years later through the Colonial Office and they sorted out a hospital which accepted me.”

For T Anderson, “the professions available with my qualifications were teaching, telegraphy and nursing. I don’t think I wanted to be a teacher and if I did, I couldn’t because to be a good grade teacher you had to pass music and I’m tone deaf! I can’t tell a quaver from a semi-quaver! So I opted for nursing. My main influence – beside my mother wanting the best profession for her children – was my cousin who was the health visitor at one of the district’s health centres.”

Left: Sherlene Rudder’s general nursing certificate, November 1967

Right: T Anderson (sitting down) at graduation, City Hospital