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Nursing the English from Plague to Peterloo, 1665-1820

Alannah Tomkins author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Manchester University Press

Publishing:21st Jan '25

£85.00

This title is due to be published on 21st January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Nursing the English from Plague to Peterloo, 1665-1820 cover

This book studies the negative stereotypes around the women who worked as sick nurses in this period and contrasts them with the lived experience of both domestic and institutional nursing staff. Furthermore, it integrates nursing by men into the broader history of care as a constant if little-recognised presence. It finds that women and men undertook caring work to the best of their ability, and often performed well, despite multiple threats to nurse reputations on the grounds of gender norms and social status. Chapters consider nursing in the home, in general hospitals, in specialist institutions like the Royal Chelsea Hospital and asylums, plus during wartime, illuminated by multiple accounts of individual nurses. In these settings, it employs the sociological concept of ‘dirty work’ to contextualise the challenges to nurses and nursing identities.

ISBN: 9781526178527

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

344 pages