The Nursing Times (Very!) short-lived Nurses' Fund

 I have been researching WW1 nurses for many years so was suprised to come across the Nursing Times Nurses' Fund - I had never heard of it!

 

I recently came across a  photo of a nurse  in The Nursing Times in which it stated that "F J Pease is one of "our" nurses". That piqued my interest so I decided to research Nurse Pease but also try to find out more about the fund, which was started in the early years of the War.

 

Nurse F J Pease 1915 

 

 There is very little information about the Fund, but it appears that nurses in the UK were asked if they would like to donate a small amount of their pay to help pay for a nurse to be sent abroad. Nurse Fanny Jane Pease was on of four nurses whose roles were funded in this way. As can be seen in the cutting below, once it was obvious that the War was going to last very much longer than anticipated - and with very many more casualties, the Nursing Times decided that due to a governmental and far more organised and busness-like process of sending nurses abroad, that the fund was no longer necessary. Indeed, when one thinks of the 1000s of nurses who served abroad - the Fund's capabilities were not enough to make any impact and so they discontinued it. 

 

  

 

 The Nursing Times article on discontinuing the fund

 

 

 

Letter from Nurse Pease

 

Fanny Jane Pease was one of the Nursing Times' nurses. She was born in 1867 in Hampstead London. Her father was a geometry teacher. He was admitted to a "lunatic" asylum in 1892 where he died in 1893.  Fanny was working as a private nurse in Hampstead in 1901. I cannot find details of her training but she is on several Nursing Registers and was sent abroad as a trained nurse with the British Red Cross. She worked for the entirity of the War and was awarded the RRC (2nd class) in 1919.

 

 Nurse Pease's Red Cross Card

 

Nurse Pease continued with her nursing career after the War, nursing in the Brompton Consumption Hospital. She had retired by 1939 but still refers to her nursing profession, stating her occupation as "Retired Hospital Nurse" in the 1939 Register. She never married and died in 1946 aged 80.

 

Nurse Pease's photo in the Nursing Times led me to discover a small part of nursing history, albeit a very small scale and for a very short time! Her career and sense of duty however, lasted for decades beyond the short-live "Nursing Times' Nurse Fund" 

 

Sources

The Nursing Times (BNA archives)

Ancestry.co.uk

Red Cross Volunteers of WW1 records.