Professor Melanie Oppenheimer’s recent article, ‘Nurses of the League: the League of Red Cross Societies and the development of public health nursing post-WW1’, explores the little known yet innovative and significant public health nursing program developed by the League of Red Cross Societies in the 1920s.
After its inaugural year at King’s College for Women, the program was transferred to Bedford College, University of London, where it evolved into an internationally recognised program educating nurses from around the world. While the program transformed the careers of individual nurses, it also contributed to the development of nursing and public health across the globe as a generation of highly influential women returned from London to transform institutions, agencies, government departments, and public health nursing practices in their home countries. Of major significance, was the experience of learning, living, and working with other women from around the world, which created a global network of professional connections and life-long friendships between the women.
Which archival materials did Melanie draw upon to trace and track the experiences of the nurses who attended Bedford College and took part in the one-year international postgraduate course?
Bedford College Nursing Papers held by the Royal Holloway Repository; copies of the Review and Information Bulletin of the LRCS; proceedings of the 1919 Cannes Medical Conference; various editions of the International Course Prospectus; Rockefeller Foundation records held by The Rockefeller Archive Center; the Lillian D Wald Papers (1895-1936) held by The New York Public Library, together with articles from the American Journal of Nursing helped to set the scene.
Of greatest importance to Melanie’s research were the issues of the International Newsletter, published three times a year by the alumni association of the Bedford graduates, the Old Internationals Association. Copies of the newsletter were sourced from the archives of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva and were digitised by Arkhênum with funding provided by the Resilient Humanitarianism Project under the supervision of IFRC Manager, Library and Archive Services, Grant Mitchell.
Each edition of the newsletter reported on the activities of the nurses in the current student cohort, but also carried news of graduates and provided updates on the work being undertaken by them in their homelands. The annual graduation ceremony and presentation of certificates were recorded in great detail, with speeches such as the one delivered by Finnish nurse Venny Snellman in July 1932 providing insights into the benefits of a year in London at Bedford College in the personal and often emotional words of the graduating nurses. Similarly, graduation dinners hosted at the Cowdray Club saw speeches and ‘thank-yous’ reported on and quoted extensively so that all graduates could imagine themselves in the room.
From the newsletters we gain a glimpse into the lives of the women who lived together at 15 Manchester Square and who attended Bedford College – how they celebrated Christmas, where they went for holidays, how the drama group kept the other nurses entertained with songs and performances, how their rooms were decorated with knick-knacks and pictures from around the globe, and which hospitals they visited as part of their education program. The newsletters are lively, entertaining, and personal. They provide an insight into the public and academic lives of the nurses studying at Bedford College but also allow the historian to glimpse the personal and private experiences of many of the graduates.
Copies of the digitised newsletters can be accessed by contacting the archivists at the IFRC via the email address provided on their website: archives.contact@ifrc.org
Oppenheimer, Melanie. ‘Nurses of the League: The League of Red Cross Societies and the Development of Public Health Nursing Post-WWI.’
History Australia 17, no. 4 (2020): 628-44.