Bring a Badge Day arrived. I had not idea who was going to turn up or even if anyone was going to make it. In a busy acute hospital when every spare part of a shift is pressured, it was a risk to know if nurses would have time to remember that there were lots of beautiful badges and displays of old photographs about the Royal Infirmary and nursing in the 20th c. in the Sanctuary. Two displays of historic nursing and hospital badges had been prepared by archivists from Lothian Health Services Archives and the Royal College of Nursing respectively.
No worries. All sorts of people popped in to have a look, bringing their own badges and all sorts of documents as well as sharing their memories of training and nursing. Sheila and Claire, two retired nurses made the journey to the Royal Infirmary to show us their badges and talk about training in the 1950s. Sheila also brought her beautiful Affleck Medal. One trainee nurse each year was awarded this prestigious prize. Must get a photograph of the medal.
Diane, called in with both her Scottish and her Australian nursing badges to show us. Just goes to show, nurses trained at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh worked all over the world!
Ruth, wetted our appetites by telling us that she still had the timetables from when she was training as a nurse at the Royal Infirmary, her Pelican badge, which she showed us and her certificates.
I now have lots of contacts to follow up for interviews. Keep checking the blog for interview extracts, going back as far as the 1940s.
Thank you to the archivists from Lothian Health Services Archives and the Royal College of Nursing for bringing badges from their collections for display. Thank you to the Spiritual Care team for enabling us to use the beautiful sanctuary for the day.
So wonderful to see these beautiful Nursing badges of the Edinburgh hospitals. I treasure mine own deeply.