This book is not what I expected, it was more, much more. This book was about Ethel Gordon Fenwick 1857-1947 in England and her fight to take nursing as a vocation to a profession. She started her calling early. At 24 she became the youngest matron (head nurse) at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. She fought to bring training, professionalism and standardization to nursing.. Ethel went head to head with Florence Nightingale and Eva Luckes each having their own idea on what nursing should be.
This time period was meticulously documented in an interesting read. Jenny Main surrounds the fight with what was happening in the world such as woman's suffrage, electricity, cars and airplanes..She writes almost in parallel: what is happening with nursing alongside world events and inventions. Reads like a nonfiction book due to all the historical facts embedded in the book.

As a nurse myself, it was interesting to see how far we have actually come, in a fairly short space of time. It horrifies me that anyone could call themselves a nurse, back in the day, despite not having had any training or really having much of a clue generally. That it took such a long time to get registration for nurses in place, is really astonishing. If not for determined women like Ethel Fenwick, this probably would not have happened at all. It is apt, that she was the very first registered nurse :)

I enjoyed reading this book and the little stories of what was going on in history at that point in time were very useful as well.

Ethel Fenwick was obviously a complete powerhouse and even though she had to leave nursing when she got married, as all women had to do until very recently, she continued to be fully involved and was responsible for nursing having the professional profile it now does. Some of the practices of her day made me cringe, it has to be said. I tell myself that no-one knew any better at the time, but wow, I am so happy to be living now!!

The only thing which was a bit annoying was a repeat of certain facts - whoever did the proof reading could have paid a little more attention!

4 stars from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pen & Sword.

Entering the nursing profession was not usual for young women in late 1800s England, but Ethel Gordon Manson chooses to become one of the first. Leaving nursing, she devoted the rest of her life to nursing reform. With a strong temperament, she was definitely up to the task.

I have been a nurse for a long time and loved learning more about Ethel Gordon Fenwick. This book is packed full of information and reads better than a textbook. I love how the chapters are divided by time periods to capture such a packed time frame. There were so many things to cover that would have impacted her career and her lifetime. I never felt overwhelmed or confused and thought things were explained very well. I really liked the coverage of contemporary events during her lifetime as it brought tremendous perspective to many events. I never considered her a contemporary to Nightingale and loved how they viewed the registry so differently, yet both had a heart and a passion to advance the profession of nursing. A truly enlightening book for all lovers of nursing history.
I received a complimentary copy from the publisher via NetGalley and all opinions expressed are solely my own, freely given.

Jenny Main, Ethel Gordon Fenwick Nursing Reformer and the First Registered Nurse, Pen & Sword, Pen & Sword History, 30 Jun 2022

Thank you NetGalley and Pen & Sword for providing me with this uncorrected proof in exchange for an honest review.

A common feature of this series is the accessibility of the written material, and the well-researched nature of the content. Jenny Main’s biography of Ethel Gordon Fenwick has these features in abundance. The background and contextual material are impressive, providing an instructive and engrossing read through the whole period of Gordon Fenwick’s life. The environment into which she was born, grew to adulthood, was educated, fought for the well being and careers of nurses, and her own amazing journey to recognition for her work is laid out, making an intriguing biography even more informative. A reader of this book learns so much about the society in which nurses sought to become prestigious members of the medical profession, and the background against which they had to prevail. I particularly enjoyed Main’s way of bringing to life the Victorian era, and later, so I felt I was reading a history of the time as well as learning about a figure who starred in her nursing profession.

There are eight chapters in the book. The first chapter covers the foundations of the work to gain registration of nurses to the 1870s, with women’s position in relation to society and work, and emphasis on medicine and nursing. A bleak beginning is mapped out, and from this background of a political environment in which women were refused education, the vote, and economic independence; and a medical environment in which nurses were any woman who deemed herself a nurse, there was no understanding of hygiene and little knowledge, the registered nurse eventually evolved. In Chapter 2 medicine, a new type of nurse and promotion are covered, leading into Chapter 3 with Gordon Fenwick’s role as matron of St Bartholomew’s highlighted. Her personal life, with marriage at its centre follows. But the dedication to her personal story easily makes way for dealing with the new challenges of 1887 – 1899. Their culmination of some successes is dealt with and ‘battles, deaths and victories’ from 1910 to 1919 lead seamlessly into the last chapter in which registration and professionalism from 1919 – 1946 accrue political and medical acknowledgment of Gordon Fenwick’s achievements.

There is a comprehensive list of sources and an index. The photographs, including one of the Blue Plaque to commemorate Ethel Gordon Fenwick, and another of a nurse with a coal scuttle, range widely. They are a history in themselves!.

Ethel Gordon Fenwick is introduced as a strong and determined women: she had to be! It took nearly thirty years for her to achieve her aim of ensuring that nurses must be registered and were professionals. She fought against antagonism, short sightedness, and discrimination to make her own career and to accomplish careers and respect for other women in the medical profession. She died a year short of knowing that this had happened with the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948. The story to get to this point is engrossing.

Main sketches the environment into which Gordon Fenwick was born. A quote provides the flavour of the history that accompanies Gordon Fenwick’s story – ‘a world that had no light bulbs or telephones, where transport was by horseback, carts, carriages, ships, and early steam trains. In her last years, she saw electricity in most homes, the internal combustion engine replacing the horse, and the jet engine and Spitfire obtaining mastery of the skies’. Later, social divisions are described, maintaining the history that accompanies the medical history. This introduces the uninformed nature of medicine, and the beginnings of recognition that nursing was an important part of the movement forward in this area, describing the way in which control of infection began. This is a particularly graphic piece of writing, from the way in which nurses worked, to the machinery, and recognising the value of such innovations which were used until the 1960s.

Marriage, as it did for all women who had fledgling careers, or even ones of note, disrupted one role Gordon Fenwick had adopted, but led her into another aimed at improving nursing standards and a profession for other women. She travelled, in America meeting colleagues working on the same issues replacing her earlier work based travel organising nurses and supplies during war time.

Jenny Main has written a book that perfectly combines the career of an intrepid worker on behalf of nurses, and in many ways the medical profession, and an impressive social history of the period. I enjoyed the combination, making this a book that I shall enthusiastically read again.