Nation's Fund for Nurses

These papers comprise the archives of the Nation's Fund for Nurses 1917-1988: annual reports, cuttings and correspondence. The archive includes papers of subsidiary organisations, namely the British Women's Hospital Committee, 1915-1920; the Elderly Nurses' Fund (Nursing Mirror Nurses and Midwives Fund), 1925-1979; the Edith Cavell Homes of Rest for Nurses, 1917-1977; and similar bodies, 1919-1979. Also included are memorabilia of Annie, Viscountess Cowdray.

The collection is divided into sections as follows:

A British Women's Hospital Committee, 1915

B Nation's Fund for Nurses, 1915-1988

C Edith Cavell Homes of Rest for Nurses, 1916-1984

D Other organisations incorporated into the NFN:

1 Archer House Home, 1919-1966

2 Council for the Provision of Rest Breaks Houses for Nurses and Midwives, 1944-1958

3 Fund for the Benefit of East Lancashire Nurses, 1918-1953

4 Queen Alexandra Relief Fund for War Nurses, 1922-1979

The annual reports, cuttings and correspondence relating to the Nation's Fund for Nurses came into the library at Wellcome Collection in 1991 as part of the archive of the Queen's Nursing Institute (SA/QNI), which was at that time administering the NFN. Since the NFN reverted to being a separately administered body in 1995, its council of management was informed of the whereabouts of the records, and permission was granted to hold them on permanent loan, the council of management retaining ownership. The minute books were extracted by the NFN administrator from the QNI library and transferred to the library at Wellcome Collection on the same terms in May 1997.

Those files of administration of grants to nurses which had been closed due to the recipients' deaths during the period of QNI administration of the Fund were received by the library at Wellcome Collection with the fourth accession of QNI archives in February 1997. Examples were kept of application forms and of one whole file which illustrates the Fund's co-operation with other charities (B.16).

The records of other charities which the Nation's Fund for Nurses administered came to the Queen's Nursing Institute along with the NFN records; C.1, C.6-10 and D.1-4 as part of Accession 400, and C.2-5 as part of Accession 706.

Further records were transferred to the library at Wellcome Collection in November 1998. The majority of these came from the estate of the late Miss Margaret E McClean, a member of the NFN's Council from 1948-1988. She died in 1998. Some correspondence files were also received at this time from Thomas Whipham, Chairman of the Council from 1981-1998.

The British Women's Hospital Committee was formed in July 1915 by members of the Actresses' Franchise League as a fund-raising body to contribute towards help for Allied servicemen injured and disabled during the First World War. The Committee collected large amounts of money which were used to build and partially endow the Star and Garter Homes for totally disabled men and to fund the Scottish Women's Hospitals.

The Hon(later Sir) Arthur Stanley, Chairman of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and Order of St John, appealed to the Committee for help with the newly-founded College of Nursing, and, following an appeal in major newspapers on 22 October 1917, the Nation's Fund for Nurses was set up to provide an endowment for the College and a 'Tribute Fund' for the relief of individual nurses during sickness and disablement. Details can be found in the report of the British Women's Hospital Committee (A.1). The archives of the Royal College of Nursing contain much correspondence on the setting up of the College and of the Nation's Fund's projects to raise money for it.

The setting up of the College of Nursing and its funding by the Nation's Fund for Nurses was opposed, not only by doctors, but by others within nursing, notably Mrs Bedford Fenwick's Royal British Nursing Association, and there is a little material on the dispute in file B.12.

The Tribute Fund was administered by a committee of twelve, half nominated by the Council of the College of Nursing and half by the British Women's Hospital Committee. An average of 60 to 70 grants were disbursed weekly, details of which are recorded in the minute books (B.5).

A separate 'Nation's Tribute to Nurses in Ireland' (Irish Branch of the NFN) was established in 1918, and the Branch's reports are reproduced in the NFN annual reports 1924-1955 (B.1/4-35), as well as being published separately (see B.2)

Annie, Viscountess Cowdray, NFN Treasurer and Chairman of the Tribute Fund Committee, presented and furnished a building to be a Nurses' Club to the College of Nursing. The records of her involvement in the enterprise survive here (B.13), and there is a file of memorabilia of her other interests (B.14). The Cowdray Club closed in the 1980s and the club's records were given to the Greater London Record Office (now the London Metropolitan Archives).

In 1919-1920, Miss May Beeman organised an appeal in the Daily Telegraph, which raised £14,464. File B.10 contains cuttings and correspondence.

A home of rest at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, presented to the College of Nursing through the efforts of Sir John and Lady Martin Harvey and the NFN Committee, was officially opened in July 1920 (See correspondence in B.9).

In 1922 the administration of the Edith Cavell Homes of Rest for Nurses was handed over to the NFN, but it was administered as a separate entity. It had been established in 1916 in memory of Edith Cavell (a British nurse who was executed by the Germans) to establish homes of rest for practising trained women nurses and probationers temporarily in need of mental or physical rest. Establishments were opened in Windermere, Haslemere, Adderley and West Norwood, and a file of correspondence relating to the home at Haslemere survives here (C.7).

The NFN assumed the administration of the Queen Alexandra Relief Fund for War Nurses in 1922 and the Church of England Nurses' Guild in 1923, and in 1930 a Charity Commissioners' scheme established a Board of Management for the NFN, the Tribute Fund, the Queen Alexandra Relief Fund and the Church Nurses Guild. The Tribute Fund Committee was re-named the Relief Committee.

In 1925 the proprietors of the Daily Mirror organised a fund for the relief of nurses who were ineligible for help from the NFN owing to insufficient training, and the NFN undertook the administration of this fund (see B.6).

The College of Nursing appointed a Nurses Appeal Committee in 1931, which every year appealed for funds for the NFN through its journal, The Nursing Times, and contributed thus towards the money disbursed by the Relief Committee. The appeal was renamed in 1955 'The Royal College of Nursing Appeal for the Nation's Fund for Nurses'. Reports on the appeal are given in the NFN annual reports.

The NFN office moved in 1934 from 32 North Audley Street to 21 Cavendish Square, adjoining the College of Nursing and the Cowdray Club.

The members of the Board of Management of the NFN are Trustees of the Nurses Benefit Fund for East Lancashire by a Charity Commissioners' scheme dated 17 April 1953, and the records of the East Lancashire Fund and its predecessors are listed below in Section D.

In 1959 the NFN took over administration of the Rest Breaks Fund for Nurses and Midwives and Snow's Charity for Female Nurses, and in 1967 of the Archer Convalescent Fund for Nurses. No records appear to survive for Snow's Charity; the records of the other charities are listed in Section D.

The Nation's Fund for Nurses was administered by the Queen's Nursing Institute from 1980 to 1995.

At Wellcome Collection:

The papers of the Queen's Nursing Institute, which administered the NFN 1980-1995, are held as SA/QNI.

The following is an interim description of material that has been acquired since this collection was catalogued. This description may change when cataloguing takes place in future:

3 transfer boxes received May 2006, containing: Accounts of the Groves Trust for Nurses and Edith Cavell and Nation's Fund for Nurses 1990-1998; Minutes of Council 1981-1999, and of Finance and Investment Committee 1998-2000, Relief Committee, 1985-1986, 1989-1994, Grants Committee 1995-2002, Joint Committee 1990-1997.