3-085-963 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Fire at the Modykhana Plague Hospital: nurses saving the native patients, 1898. British nurses in India. 'From a Sketch by J. Berriman Vears, Bombay. By a curious irony of circumstance more than half of the special plague hospital at Modykhana, opened but recently by the Bombay Plague Committee, was destroyed on Feb. 16 by a fire which originated in an adjoining shed. Eighty-six natives suffering from the plague were occupying the wards at the time, but they were one and all carried forth to a place of safety by the English nurses, Miss Winscombe, the nurse in charge, Miss Wood, Mrs. Campbell, Miss Campbell, Miss Snowdon, Miss C. Brown, Miss Fry, and Miss Buckley, with splendid promptitude and courage. The heroic conduct of these Englishwomen has deeply stirred public feeling at home. It is a noble example of unselfish devotion to duty. There is a tendency to regard hospital nursing as rather a frivolous occupation for women. In some popular novels the hospital nurse is more intent upon flirtation than upon healing. This incident at Bombay gives another aspect to her labours'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.