Description:
More than 500 New Zealand nurses served overseas in World War 1. At the end of the war, nearly a quarter of the country’s nursing workforce was still overseas. Most nurses served with the New Zealand Army Nursing Service (NZANS) but, in the early months of the war, before the NZANS had been sufficiently organised to send nurses, some joined the Australian service. Others went independently to Britain or were already there and joined services such as the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (QAs), the French Flag Corps and Red Cross, or worked in British military hospitals or hospitals in France run by wealthy British women.
Description:
The establishment in 1903 of a professional district nursing service in Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, was a philanthropic response to the need for skilled care for the sickpoor in their own homes, as hospital and charitable aid boards believed chronic patients drained their resources. This paper argues that it was the timely combination of the individual philanthropy of Sarah Ann Rhodes, the organisational philanthropy of the St John Ambulance Association and the new professional standing and availability of registered nurses such as Annie Holgate that ensured its successful foundation. It also argues that district nursing services blurred spatial, social, and public-private boundaries in new ways. Finally, it considers the district nurse's role as the philanthropist 's proxy, the means for realising the philanthropist's desire to help the sick poor.