History
District Nursing in England was 150 years old in 2009. In 1858 Liverpool philanthropist William Rathbone employed a nurse, Mary Robinson, to take care of his wife at home during her final illness. After his wife’s death in 1859, he engaged Mary to go into one of the poorest districts of the City to bring healthcare to people who had no means to pay for it. He spent the rest of his life working to build up the service, with assistance from Florence Nightingale and others. District nursing on the Liverpool model soon sprang up in other towns, cities and rural areas, funded by local philanthropists.
In 1887 Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Institute for Nurses was founded, centralising training for district nurses (or Queen’s Nurses as they became known) until nursing education became nationalised in 1968. The charity, which became The Queen’s Nursing Institute, continues to support community nurses to this day. The Institute always needed to raise funds and until the creation of the NHS in 1948, district nurses collected contributions from their patients.
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