Records of the EAST LONDON NURSING SOCIETY

<p>Surviving minutes of the Society, which commence in January 1877, are held on deposit by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, 277, Bancroft Road, London, E1 4DW (see: NS/X/1).</p>

The records listed overleaf were transferred to the Royal London Hospital Archives from the Princess Alexandra and Newham College of Nursing and Midwifery on 10th March 1992.

This Society was established in 1868 with the aim "To provide trained nurses to nurse Sick Poor in their own homes in East London". Three private nurses were initially engaged to work in Bromley, Poplar and St. Philips, Stepney Way. The Society merged with the Metropolitan and National Association for Providing Trained Nurses for the Sick Poor (formed 1874), becoming its Eastern Division, but in 1881 the East End Branch assumed its original, independent position. In 1883 H.R.H. Princess Christian consented to be President of the Society, which became affiliated with Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for Nurses in 1891. From 1912 the Society's nurses began to attend the School Centre in Poplar and, in the years that followed, the London County Council and Borough Councils increasingly supported the Society's work. From 1943 the L.C.C. asked the Society to take responsibility for District midwifery training in the area. An account of the history of the Society until 1958 is given in The History of a Hundred Years: East London Nursing Society 1868 - 1968 by Edith Ramsay, M.B.E.