Uniforms and discipline were an important part of the NHS in its early years and all new recruits had to respect them. 

Before starting her training, Margaret Knight “had to buy these awful-looking shoes that were the requirement for King’s College Hospital. I think they were called black Oxfords … specially built for nurses who have to be on their feet all day.” She also remembers her nurse’s uniform, which was “white and blue striped with a white apron and the caps, I think they were the laughing stock of the other hospitals around London; they were very peculiar looking caps. Second-year nurses were called ‘kipper caps’ because their caps were slightly different. They looked a bit like kippers! I think nurses’ caps from other hospitals were a little rounder and flatter than ours. They were not very attractive looking and we had to wear stockings and ugly black Oxford brogues …

“Our chief surgeon was the Queen’s surgeon, he had a voice like thunder. He shouted at me one day because my stocking seam was crooked. He stood at the bottom of the ward and I was going up the ward with a whole pile of bedpans and he shouted, ‘Nurse with the bedpans, your stocking seams are crooked. I wondered if he thought I should throw the bedpans down and straighten the stockings! I just turned around and said, ‘Yes sir, sorry sir.’ A nurse was terrified of ward sisters and doctors.”

Lena Hunt remembers: “Each hospital had a different design for caps, in which we took

great pride. Discipline was certainly very different – for example, nurses never ever addressed each other by Christian names while on duty, and to call a doctor by his Christian name was a hanging offence! I remember being soundly told off for whistling on one occasion by the sister tutor – I was off duty at the time.

“She said, ‘If you colonial nurses are going to behave like that I don’t know whether we shall want to have any more of you.’ Of course my reply was, ‘Yes, sister,’ as it had to be.”

Tryphena Anderson was glad that nursing was a disciplined profession, “because back home we’re used to a routine and discipline, so that was not a problem for me but sometimes it’s hard to go by discipline when you have to remember who’s senior to you and who to

open the door for. No one wanted to do the sluice. If you were the junior nurse that was your job. If sister asked, ‘Have you cleaned the sluice?’ and you said ‘Yes’ and you had not, you would clean it tomorrow and any other jobs you had not done and as a result you would leave late.”

Margaret Knight recalls that “the ward sister she was really a dragon, she did not like what she termed ‘colonials’, it didn’t matter if you were from the Caribbean, Canada, Australia or wherever. She thought we were beneath her and she tended to crush anyone who came from the Commonwealth. She kept referring to me as, ‘You little colonial’. It was awful. So I had a rough time on that ward.”