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Jenny Main

A great nursing reformer, Ethel Gordon Fenwick was born before the age of the motor car and died at the start of the jet age. When she began her career, nursing was a vocation, unregulated with a dangerous variety of standards and inefficiencies. A gifted nurse, Ethel worked alongside great medical men of the day and, aged 24, she became the youngest matron of St Bartholomew’s hospital London, where she instigated many improvements. At that time, anyone could be called a nurse, regardless of ability. Ethel recognized that for the safety of patients, and of nurses, there must be an accepted standard of training, with proof of qualification provided by a professional register. Often contentious, Ethel was a determined woman. She fought for nearly thirty years to achieve a register to ensure nurses were qualified, respected professionals. A suffragist and journalist, she travelled to America where she met like-minded nursing colleagues. As well as helping to create the International Council of Nurses, and the Royal British Nurses Association, she was also instrumental in organising nurses and supplies during the Graeco-Turkish War, and was awarded several medals for this work. Thanks to her long campaign for registration, a year after her death nurses were ready to take their place alongside other professionals when the National Health Service began in 1948.

Pen & Sword History

Trailblazing Women

Ethel Gordon Fenwick: Nursing Reformer and the First Registered Nurse

Jacki Hill-Murphy

Isabella Bird traveled to the wildest places on earth, but at home in Britain she lay in bed, hardly able to write: 'an invalid at home and a Samson abroad.' In Japan she rode on a 'yezo savage' through foaming floods along unbeaten tracks, and was followed in the city by a crowd of a thousand, whose clogs clattered 'like a hailstorm' as they vied for a glimpse of the foreigner. She documented America before and after the Civil War and was deported from Korea with only the tweed suit she stood up in during a Japanese invasion. In China she was attacked with rocks and sticks and called a foreign dog, but she never gave up and went home. 'The prospect of the unknown has its charms.' Transformed by distant lands, she crossed raging floods, rode elephants, cows and yak, clung to her horse's neck as it clambered down cliff paths, slept on simple mats on the bare ground, unable to change out of wet clothes or get out of the searing heat. Her travels and the books she wrote about them show courage and tenacity, fueled by a restless spirit and a love of nature. She is as unique now as she was then.

The Life and Travels of Isabella Bird: The Fearless Victorian Adventurer

Nell Darby

“A unique and inherently fascinating history that brings a particular aspect of the role of women in law enforcement up out of obscurity.” —Midwest Book Review

The 1857 Divorce Act paved the way for a new career for women: that of the private detective. To divorce, you needed proof of adultery—and men soon realized that women were adept at infiltrating households and befriending wives, learning secrets and finding evidence. 

Over the course of the next century, women became increasingly confident in gaining work as private detectives, moving from largely unrecognized helpers to the police and to male detectives, to becoming owners of their own detective agencies. In fiction, they were depicted as exciting creatures needing money and work; in fact, they were of varying ages, backgrounds and marital status, seeking adventure and independence as much as money. Former actresses found that detective work utilized their skills at adopting different roles and disguises; former spiritualists were drafted to denounce frauds and stayed to become successful private eyes; and several female detectives became keen supporters of the women’s suffrage movement, having seen for themselves how career-minded women faced obstacles in British society.

Sister Sleuths seeks to shed light on the groundbreaking women who have worked over the past century and a half to uncover wrongdoing and solve crimes.

“The book is well-researched and provides numerous examples of women who either dabbled in investigation or made it their life’s work.” —Historical Novel Society

“Absolutely enthralling stuff.” —Books Monthly

Sister Sleuths: Female Detectives in Britain

Victoria Owens

The remarkable biography of a mother of ten who stepped up to run her late husband’s ironworks in Victorian Wales.

When impoverished aristocrat Lady Charlotte Bertie married wealthy Welsh ironmaster John Guest of Dowlais in 1833, her relatives looked on with dismay. Yet despite their vast difference of background and age, over their nineteen-year long marriage husband and wife enjoyed great happiness and much adventure. There would be ten children, and while John built up an immense commercial empire, Charlotte championed Welsh culture.

Crucially, she taught herself John’s business from the inside. Over the years, she made the keenest observation of iron production, the fluctuations of the trade, and the engineering innovations. When John died in 1852, she was therefore uniquely placed to succeed him as head of the works—a remarkable position for a Victorian woman. She endeavoured to introduce reforms, but also—rather to her dismay—had to weather a potentially destructive strike.

But success came at a price. With her star seemingly in the ascendant, Lady Charlotte suddenly chose to abandon all, leave Wales, and marry her sons’ tutor. This book traces the ardent, creative years of her first marriage, explores her determination to preserve John’s legacy as a widow, and observes her growing devotion to the scholarly Charles Schreiber.