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St Mary's Hospital Nursing Badge...Motto......"Heavens Light Our Guide" .....made by Toye and Co.London

Realised QA and The Royal were part of the St Mary's School of Nursing Group

Thanks for that Dea...good to hear from you...!

Rollo - you are a very lucky person to have Erin on your side !!

Best of luck,

Dea xxx

Rollo....You have to be a member of the Royal College to access their site..I am not but have a sister who is will ask her to help out....
Why were you contacting the QA Portsmouth...?

My mother was awarded her nursing badge at St Marys - I have the hospital paperwork for the ceremony listing all the nurses in her year. The badges were awarded by the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth. Two years later she was a staff nurse in London.

I am too busy to pay a visit to the British Library. I am therefore going to try and get the records for my mother and her friend by contacting the B.L. directly. When I contacted the RCN thery were unable to give me this information. Queen Alexandra's Hospital in Portsmouth were even less helpful.

Between 1921 and 1983, there were three General Nursing Councils (GNC) in existence in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The councils had clearly prescribed duties and responsibilities for the training, examination and registration of nurses. They also approved training schools for the purpose of maintaining a register of nurses for England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

Register of nurses
The register of nurses was first published in 1922, and was produced annually until the late 1940s. These volumes list the nurse by name (including maiden name where appropriate), registration date and number, permanent address at that time, and where they qualified with dates. Later volumes were produced in the 1950s, which list only new nurses for each year and do not give the address.

GNC (General Nursing Council) Registers held at British Library
Welcome Library
RCN Archives

Rollo
If you have her Hospital Badge then she would only have received that if she had done her SRN Training at St Mary's... cant speak for the years in question but at one time you needed to complete 4 yrs at your Training Hospital before you were awarded the Hospital Badge....a carrot if ever there was one to encourage Nurses to stay on an extra year after qualification...to many (myself included) your Hospital Badge was more important than the silver SRN one.

Please follow the links I have given you - there is info on there for the time you mention.

Dea x

I have her nursing badge, a Maltese Cross in the case of St Marys. As it is hallmarked she would have been from before girls were called up into nursing during ww2 and the badges enamel on silver plate. That is why I am unsure whether my CAS was from Portsmouth, not usually associated with silver spoons and "gels".

The RCN badge is round, silver with a blue circle.

I have both badges for my mother who qualified 1944.

The RCN do not offer any kind of gateway to archives of nurses who are long retired. They do not seem to have these archives. I shall follow up very useful the suggestions given. Thank you

I am not given to forking out £ 10 for certs on the basis of guesswork. I only do this when I have a reasonable amount of evidence, more than GRO records for sure.

Thank you Erin! - Let's just hope that Rollo comes back and follows it through! ;-)

There is lots of info out there - One useful site is :

http://www.scarletfinders.co.uk/7.html

It is extremely useful for WW1 nurses but has lots of advice and links to later ways to track down nurses details.

A particularly good one is the British Journal of Nursing searchable through that site.

Dea Xxx

Dea...Couldnt have written it better myself...!

Rollo...When you say you have her "Nursing Badge" is it her Registration Badge...(should have her Reg No.on the back) or her Hospital Badge...?


Records for St Marys are held at Portsmouth Museums and Records Office.
According to the Welcome Library they include Staff records.

Apparently these registers are available at National Archives in Kew:

The Nurses Registration Act of 1919 ended many years of conflict within the profession, and for the first time set standards for training, examination, and registration. From 1922 the General Nursing Council produced a yearly register of all trained nurses who had satisfied them that they had reached the required standard for admission, and copies of these registers for England and Wales are available to view at The National Archives, Kew, in class DT10. They give details of all women admitted to the Register and who had notified them of their continuing wish to practice by the September of the year prior to that of publication. The early registers give:

Number on the Register
Surname
Forenames
Permanent home address
Training hospital with dates and qualification obtained

As a condition of the Nurses Registration Act 1919, many existing nurses were entered on the first registers, although they did not comply with the strict conditions of training that were enforced later. This means that many women who trained as early as 1890 are on the register of nurses, as long as they were still active in nursing in 1922.

For information about the location of Registers for nurses registered in Scotland or Ireland, and several other sources related to nurses, see the Royal College of Nursing site here:

Royal College of Nursing - Tracing Nurses


Dea x

Perhaps I have misunderstood but I believe that there was voluntary registration on force during the late 1800's but around 1919 the Nurses Registration Act was finally passed and Registration then came into force??

1905-1920

National Council of Nurses formed.
The First World War results in large numbers of unmarried women, many of whom devote their lives to nursing.
College of Nursing founded in 1915. (See entries on Cooper Perry and Royal College of Nursing)
1919 sees the Nurses Registration Act and the establishment of the Ministry of Health.[2]

The pressure for state registration grew throughout the 1890s but was undermined by disagreements within the profession over the desired form and purpose of the regulatory system. In 1902, the Midwives Registration Act established the state regulation of midwives and, two years later, a House of Commons Select Committee was established to consider the registration of nurses.

The committee reported in 1904 and set out a detailed and persuasive case for registration. However, the government sat on the report and took no action. Over the next decade, a number of private member's bills to establish regulation were introduced but all failed to achieve significant support in Parliament.

The First World War provided the final impetus to the establishment of nursing regulation, partly because of the specific contribution made by nurses to the war effort and also as a reflection of the increased contribution of women more generally in society. The College of Nursing (later the Royal College of Nursing) was established in 1916 and three years later persuaded a backbench Member of Parliament (MP), Major Richard Barnett, to introduce a private members bill to establish a regulatory system. The bill was finally passed in December 1919 and separate Nurses Registration Acts were passed for England/Wales, Scotland and Ireland, which was still part of the United Kingdom at the time. These acts established the General Nursing Council for England and Wales and the other bodies which survived intact until the legislative changes in 1979 which were to create the UKCC and the National Boards of Nursing. Ethel Gordon Fenwick was the first nurse on the English register.

Dea x

EDIT:
1919 – The UK passes the Nursing Act of 1919, which provides for registration of nurses, but it will not become effective until 1923

Dea x

Buying the 1913 birth cert would seem to be the simplest solution

The GNC national registration scheme was not in effect in 1942 - there was no national health service,

The details for C.A.S. qualification as a nurse are certain - as I have said I have her nursing badge hallmarked in sterling silver 1942.

I am following up the various suggestions.

You said initially that she 'qualified in 1942'.....are you now saying that your statement was not accurate?

I think that at that time all nurses had to be registered with the General Nursing Council.

This is the current site for them which would not show anything in a search going back that far but it may be an aidea to contact them and see if they can point you in the right direction for old records?

http://www.nmc-uk.org/

Best of luck,

Dea Xxx

mmmm ... I thought this would be easy.

There is also a Constance Adelaide Simmons Wigley from Oz who was a nurse and may have been in the UK 1937-

I guess I shall have to see what archives the hospital has. It has been demolished and replaced with new buildings which usually means a hunt for the archives.

thank you for your suggestions

A female child born 1957, Wellington, Shropshire - same RD as the Hughes/Simmons marriage. If the 1913 birth, then Mum would have been 44 ish at the time.

If Detectives marriage is correct, and the 1913 birth is also correct, then there is this possible death
Civil Registration event: Death

Name: HUGHES, Constance A
Registration district: Birmingham
County: Warwickshire
Year of registration: 1962
Quarter of registration: Jan-Feb-Mar
Age at death: 49
Volume no: 9C
Page no: 866

2 Constance A Simmons births more recent than the 1889 one shown. I should think that the 1913 one in Portsmouth suggested by Reggie looks a good bet (though not certain) if she trained in Portsmouth and the Edmonton birth probably married in Edmonton

Civil Registration event: Birth

Name: SIMMONS, Constance A
Registration district: Edmonton
County: Middlesex
Year of registration: 1911
Quarter of registration: Jul-Aug-Sep
Mother's maiden name: Nelson
Volume no: 3A
Page no: 1099

Civil Registration event: Marriage

MarriageFinder: Constance A Simmons married Reginald A Warner
Name: SIMMONS, Constance A
Registration district: Edmonton
County: Middlesex
Year of registration: 1932
Quarter of registration: Jan-Feb-Mar
Spouse's last name: Warner
Volume no: 3A
Page no: 1268


Civil Registration event: Birth

Name: SIMMONS, Constance A
Registration district: Portsmouth
County: Hampshire
Year of registration: 1913
Quarter of registration: Oct-Nov-Dec
Mother's maiden name: Shepherd
Volume no: 2B
Page no: 650