International Day of the Nurse

Three Nurses

Florence Nightingale

Today is the International Day of the Nurse, it is also the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. Emily Weddall was a nurse too. Inspired by Nurse Nightingale, she trained at Sir Patrick Dunn’s Hospital, Dublin under the supervision of Nurse Margaret Rachel Huxley, who as a young girl was inspired by Florence Nightingale. Nurse Huxley can be credited with reforming Irish nursing.

Margaret Rachel Huxley

As a fully qualified nurse, Emily adhered to her very modern training, which commenced in 1891, when she was twenty-three, the appropriate age at the time. She nursed in public and private hospitals and as a personal nurse too. Her career took her to Europe and beyond, became a source of income to her in a time of great financial hardship. She applied her skills during a typhus outbreak in 1913 and during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. She also collected money to help fund the Lady Dudley Nurses.

Emily by Tina O’Rourke

Emily as a nurse was a valued member of Cumann na mBan, and gave classes in first aid during the Revolutionary years in Ireland. She also attended to wounded members of the IRA during the dark days of the War of Independence. She was known to cycle long distances during wet cold nights “to nurse a sick member or to save the capture of others”. When an apology was made or gratitude expressed to her, she always replied; ” It is my duty to help our soldiers”. She was in her own way a ‘lady with a lamp’.

Sources

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Margaret_Huxley.png

Belfast Weekly News 05 December 1907

Mayo News 3rd December 1952

Irish Independent 1905-2011 Date:May 21, 1913;Section:None;Page Number:3