|
|
|
Book Review
| Judith Godden, Lucy Osburn, a Lady Displaced: Florence Nightingale's Envoy to Australia (Sydney, NSW: Sydney University Press, 2006). ISBN 9781920898397 and 1 920898 39 5. x + 373 pp.
|
| Lucy Osburn was born in 1836, the daughter of a Yorkshire wine and spirit merchant (bankrupted when she was six years old) and his wife, whose family was at the core of the Leeds medical establishment. In the late 1850s Lucy was employed as a 'superior servant' by a relative through marriage who was a medical missionary in Jerusalem. Her claim to have assisted with surgical patients—upon which her biographer casts doubts—was a factor in her acceptance in 1866 for nurse training at St Thomas's Hospital under the auspices of Florence Nightingale and the hospital matron, Miss Wardroper; equally important was Osburn's status as a financially independent 'lady,' courtesy of an inheritance from a great-aunt. |
1
|
|
Within a matter of weeks Osburn had been earmarked because of her education and class as a suitable leader for Nightingale's plans to send a lady superintendent and a band of trained nurses to Sydney as a first step in her aim to extend Nightingale nursing to the colonies. It was a decision which Nightingale later regretted. Within a few years of Osburn's arrival in Sydney (in March 1868), Nightingale had come to regard her as the lowest of the low, occupying a slot below that of another of the Nightingale failures, the lady superintendent of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, who proved to be an alcohol and opium addict. |
2
|
|
Anne Marie Rafferty's foreword claims that Osburn 'occupies an iconic place in the canon of Australian nursing history' (p. ix), and that her story contains all the ingredients of Victorian melodrama. Judith Godden's lively and insightful biography sets Osburn's contribution to the Sydney Infirmary in the wider context of her life and does not shirk from criticism of those aspects of her character which undermined her effectiveness as a flag bearer for Nightingale's vision. |
3
|
|
A series of recurring themes punctuated Osburn's seventeen years in Sydney. Her relations with the nurses who served under her were often strained, with accusations and counter-accusations regularly dispatched to Nightingale. Osburn's managerial style was sadly deficient, a flaw which she freely admitted (p. 188) and something which Godden attributes to her lack of experience in managing family servants (p. 130). Osburn's views on the future development of the Sydney Infirmary are also closely documented, as are the ongoing and bitter disputes with the Sydney medical staff, and in particular with surgeon Alfred Roberts, as to who should control the institution. The circumstances surrounding the 1873 Royal Commission into the Infirmary are dealt with in detail. These various tensions were compounded by the sectarianism which was rife in Sydney at this time. The perception that Osburn had 'popish' inclinations was compounded by her unwise use of the title 'Lady Superior' on her visiting cards and by her insistence on the term 'sister' rather than 'head nurse.' |
4
|
|
Many facets of this story are revealed through the letters from Osburn to Nightingale. While these are described by the author as a 'biographer's delight,' Godden acknowledges the need for caution since Nightingale's side of the correspondence has not survived. Even so, she occasionally falls prey to the one-sidedness of these documents; a good example of this is her account of the tension between Osburn and Roberts (pp. 126ff), which is based entirely on the former's letters, with no corroborating evidence. Such lapses aside, Godden's judicious use of the letters provides numerous insights into the events described and clearly demonstrates the difficulties faced by Nightingale in trying to shape or influence policy and practice from a distance of 12,000 miles in the pre-electronic era, and those which Osburn encountered in trying to interpret or implement Nightingale's wishes. |
5
|
|
Osburn's letters flesh out her life and Godden uses them to provide numerous insights into colonial Sydney, and into the evolution of nurse training in Australia. The text is meticulously footnoted, though the lack of a dedicated bibliography makes it hard to navigate one's way around the sources. |
6
|
In concentrating as she does upon Lucy Osburn, Godden does not always fully contextualise the events surrounding her tenure in Sydney. Disputes over lay, medical or nursing control of hospitals, the feminisation of nursing and the replacement of wardsmen which occurred in 1869–70 in Sydney, and the allegations in the 1870s that Osburn was trying to turn the Infirmary into a Catholic hospital all had their counterparts elsewhere. It would also have been useful to have some clarification of the clear distinction in the nature of the British and Australian hospital systems, which had a quite different ethos from one another in the mid-nineteenth century. The claim, for instance, that the word 'infirmary' was associated with destitution and the chronically ill (pp. 99–100) is too sweeping—the Scots in Sydney would more readily associate the name infirmary with the acute general hospitals in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee and many other Scottish cities and towns. All in all, however, this is a fine example of the biographer's craft and one which adds to our understanding of nursing and hospital development in Australia.
|
7
|
| DEREK A. DOW
|
| THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|