Irish nurses in the NHS

Irish Nurses in the NHS – An Oral History
Louise Ryan, Gráinne McPolin and Neha Doshi
Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2025, 232 pages

‘I walked into the dining room and sat down at this table. There were three other girls sat (sic) at the table and one girl said to me, “Are you Irish?” I said, “Yes”. And they were three Irish girls, weren’t they?’

That was Niamh’s experience on her first day of nurse training in Yorkshire in 1958 as she joined the thousands of Irish nurses who worked in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). In 1948 Britain didn’t have enough nurses to staff its new health service, so it looked elsewhere, especially to Ireland, for recruits. By the 1970s there were 31,000 Irish-born nurses working in Britain, about 12 per cent of all nursing staff.

Niamh was one of forty-five nurses who were interviewed for an oral history project whose aim is ‘to record and relate the hitherto untold stories of Irish nurses in Britain’s National Health Service’. The interviewees left Ireland between 1951 and 1983 and all but two were female.

They were recruited in Ireland, most learning about their future jobs from newspaper advertisements or by word-of-mouth.

Almost all were recruited as trainees, not as qualified nurses – nurse training in Ireland was an expensive business at the time.

These very young women set off on the boat to England where many experienced a ‘deep culture shock’ on arrival. Earlier migrants discovered that rationing was still in place in Britain in the early 1950s, they had to queue for their weekly allowance of butter and sugar in the nurses’ home. For many it was also their first experience of meeting ‘a much more diverse crowd’, other trainees, mostly from Commonwealth countries, as well as a few English girls. Many life-long friendships were made in the nurses’ homes.

Nurse training was hospital-based and very practical, with alternating blocks of classroom and ward work – ‘learn, practice, learn practice’.

The wards were regimented places under the control of the all-powerful Sister.

Everyone knew their place and wore a specific uniform and belt so that everyone else knew who was who in the hierarchy.

Orders were followed without question and, ‘you didn’t answer back.’

Initially all the nurses lived in the hospitals, but later, with written permission from their parents, they moved into flats and houses.

If managing their money was sometimes a challenge, they enjoyed their new-found freedom and opportunities to socialise. Many later married partners they had met at dances; more than a third of the women married British men – ‘I didn’t tell her [her mother] I got married because I knew she’d kill me for marrying an Englishman’.

Sometimes, especially during the Troubles of the 1970-90s, Irish nurses experienced hostility and racism, – ‘Oh!, you stupid Irish woman’; ‘Effing Irish cow’. But for the most part they were liked and their hard work much appreciated, even if accents sometimes caused difficulties with communication.
Many Irish nurses later attained senior roles in the NHS and all were proud of their service.

The interviewees felt that the Irish contribution to the NHS has never been recognised and almost all felt that the modern NHS is not what it used to be.

This very nice publication is not a history book, but a series of thoughtful memoirs by a cohort of nurses who are rightfully proud of their role in Britain’s NHS.

There are lots of photographs and the nurses voices are heard loud and clear. It goes a little way to celebrate the remarkable contribution of a group of Irish women and men to the institution that is the NHS.

Author
Prof Pierce A. Grace is Adjunct Professor of Surgical Science, Graduate Entry Medical School, University of Limerick.