"It is natural for every woman to be, to some extent, a nurse": nursing in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Australia

From the 1860s to 1900 general nursing changed from being a degraded occupation associated with the work of servants to a unique female occupation filled by women with some education. By the end of the century there was widespread community acceptance that women were the only suitable nurses, but that they needed formal training to be fit to carry out the work of a nurse. Specific apprenticeship-style training was developed in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and nurses provided indispensable cheap labour for hospitals. In the transition from nurse as general servant to the specially skilled nurse, the status of the practitioners rose more sharply than the working conditions. By 1890 the ideal nurse was seen to be a woman of education and refinement. Innate womanly virtues were needed as a nurse was "born not made" but she also required education, devotion to the orders and good reputation of the doctor, hard work and true love of her work. Nurses were thus trapped into poor working conditions by the success of their own rhetoric.