THERE HAVE BEEN renewed calls to bring back matron into our hospitals to restore discipline and cleanliness in the wards and this is happening in many parts of the country. The evidence is that these fearsome ladies in times past ruled their domain with a rod of iron and doctors as well as nurses stepped out of line at their peril.

This photograph of a redoubtable lady from our history wears a matron’s uniform of the Victorian and Edwardian era and as it was found locally she was most certainly in a position of some importance, either at the former Fever Hospital in Manor Lane which operated during the late 19th century, the Butterfield Hospital that opened in North Road in 1911 or perhaps the Bourne Hospital which began life in South Road in 1915 as an isolation unit for infectious diseases.

The picture is printed on a ceramic plate and is among the exhibits at the Heritage Centre at Baldock’s Mill in South Street. But her identity is a mystery.

I would imagine that Dr John Galletly (1899-1993), family physician in Bourne for forty years, might have provided the answer and I asked his former partner, Dr Geoffrey Smith, now living in retirement in Norfolk, whether he had been shown this picture during his career but he was unable to help and added that he would have dreaded to have served under such a formidable looking lady.

Several senior nurses worked in Bourne during the period this picture was taken. In 1899, when the Bourne Nursing Association was formed, Nurse Bellamy was appointed parish nurse at a salary of £60 per annum with rent free accommodation and a heating allowance. She was to wear a uniform approved by the committee and her hours of work were agreed, not responding to any emergency calls before 8 am or after 8 pm on weekdays and before 8 am and after 10 am on Sundays.

It was also decided that she could only attend calls of a minor nature unless a doctor was present and that she must not accept gratuities of any kind. By 1900, the nurse was making more than 2,000 visits a year to treat patients in their own homes, in the town as well as Dyke and Cawthorpe villages, most being made by bicycle. In 1905, Nurse Bellamy was released to go to Lincoln for several weeks to assist in a typhoid epidemic, her absence being sanctioned by the committee "in the interests of the occupants of Bourne". Yes, it could be her.

When the Butterfield was opened in 1910, the first matron was Miss Crawley but there is little about her in the archives except that she was allowed 25s. per week to stock her store cupboard, 25s. for the maintenance of staff and 1s. per head per day for patients. The first to be admitted was William Thornton, aged five, who had fallen from a bridge in Eastgate breaking his thigh which was set on the kitchen table before he was admitted to the ward to recover which he did sufficiently to present a bouquet to the Countess of Ancaster at the opening ceremony on June 28th. William incidentally, lived to be 63 and died in July 1969. Is this her I wonder?

Or is she perhaps the unnamed Scots matron who occasionally took a drop too much. She was the first to be appointed soon after the opening of Bourne Hospital in 1915, but only on a temporary basis and Dr Galletly’s father, who ran the practice before him, was anxious to show off the town’s new medical facility. He remembered in his memoirs:

“My father, full of justifiable pride, invited a friend of his, Dr Henry Turner of Castle Bytham, to come and see the hospital and they arrived one afternoon to find the matron drunk. She was sacked and we heard later that she had joined the army nursing service but when in Salonika during the Gallipoli campaign, took to the bottle again and was dismissed from the service.” Could it be her?

Dr Galletly‘s cousin, Miss Annie Wemyss Galletly, who trained as a nurse in Edinburgh, became the first full time matron on 8th December 1916 and began work four days later at a salary of £50 a year, payable in monthly instalments but she was also provided with furnished accommodation at the hospital together with the free use of gas, water, coal and all of her meals. Her contract with Bourne Rural District Council which built the hospital gives a glimpse of employment conditions at that time because it stipulated that she could not engage in any outside work, that she could take four weeks’ holiday each year by arrangement with the council and that one month’s notice on either side would be required if her employment was terminated.

Miss Galletly was also required to keep the hospital’s account and record books which would be available at all times for inspection by council officials or the Local District Auditor. Yet despite these arduous administrative duties, her work during the terrible influenza epidemic of 1918 was of particular merit, frequently going with doctors to help lay out the bodies in Morton where many had died within a week, throwing the entire village into a state of panic. Miss Galletly continued as matron until she resigned in July 1920.

Is it her perhaps? Or, more likely, I think it is Maud Beesley who was working at the Nurses’ Institute in Hull in February 1893 when smallpox broke out among navvies working on the new rail link into Bourne and she volunteered to come here and look after the patients. The only communal medical facility at that time was the Bourne Fever Hospital that had been established in a pair of converted cottages in Manor Lane but conditions were far from satisfactory. Many died although the figure is not known because the medical records mysteriously disappeared and there is evidence of gross incompetence among public health officials.

But by mid-summer, the outbreak had been brought under control and Nurse Beesley returned to Hull after a grateful town acknowledged her cheerful and invaluable service in nursing some of the smallpox sufferers practically single-handed. She was also presented with a travelling bag together with a purse of money and an illuminated address. My guess is that this is her picture but if anyone else has another idea I would be pleased to hear it.

NOTE: This article was published by The Local newspaper on Friday 28th July 2006.