Nursing scrapbook.
[Medical] Bremner, Geraldine. Scrapbook. 1919-1940 (and a few 1956-57).
Album containing more than 300 items Bremner compiled documenting her career as a member of the General Nursing Council for England and Wales, and of the Royal College of Nursing, and as a leading proponent of improved pay and conditions for nurses.
Correspondence, photographs, newspaper and magazine cuttings, and ephemera are present from various locations, in an album by George Pulman & Sons Ltd, London.
Geraldine Bremner is an important and neglected figure in the history of the nursing profession. In a letter printed in the Nursing Mirror on 19 November 1927 she neatly states her achievements to that time:
I stand for the interests of all nurses, and especially for those of private nurses, whose work and difficulties I so well understand, being a private nurse myself. | I have been a member of the General Council for five years and of the Council of the College of Nursing over seven years, and was on the committee of the Nurses Co-operation, 22 Langham Street, W.1, for many years. Perhaps I may be forgiven on this occasion if I mention just four improvements I was instrumental in bringing forward and helping to pilot through when on that committee: - 1. The rating of the nurses’ fees with the adoption of the sliding scale. 2. A complete reform and bringing up to date of the “Case Papers.” 3. The suggestion to employers as to the number of hours a nurse should work. 4. The adoption of the term “Sister” for those on the nursing staff.’ (This and other quotations in this entry from items in the collection.) Geraldine Bremner was the daughter of Captain G. W. Bremner of Castle Hall, Milford Haven. She was educated at Slapham High School and Hildersheim in Germany, and trained at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. From 1929 she served as Matron at the headquarters of Imperial Chemical Industries in Millbank. In 1919 she was elected a member of the council of the College of Nursing, and two years later a member of the General Nursing Council, representing private nurses. Bremner was, according to her entry in the Lady’s Who’s Who for 1938, ‘Instrumental with others in establishment of superannuation scheme for hospital officers and nurses.
She made, according to the entry, a particular study of economics, being “Interested in economic and general improvement in the nursing profession.”
Present in this album are over 300 items, including corrected typescripts of papers and addresses, correspondence with some copies of replies, photographs, newspaper and magazine cuttings, handbills, invitation cards, ephemera. Most of the items are laid down on 218pp. of a sturdy 4to album (green cloth, rebacked with black leather spine) with ticket of George Pulman & Sons Ltd, 24-27 Thayer St, Manchester Square, London, with around a tenth of the material loosely inserted. Original typescripts by Bremner include: a ‘paper on Private Nurses and their hours on duty,’ titled ‘Time to Change’ (4pp., 8vo); a paper on ‘The Organisation of the Nursing Profession’ (3pp., 4to); a 1924 ‘Report for College Council’ titled ‘The Hospital Problem Conference’ (2pp., 8vo); an address, with autograph emendations, to the Royal Infirmary, Hull (13pp., foolscap 8vo), in which she comments: ‘Now British Nurses are organising themselves, they may be quite sure that they are being watched by the Nursing Profession all over the world. Ah, indeed, and by the Medical Profession also! So let us see that we do it well!’; copy of letter to Sir Arthur Stanley (3pp., 8vo) on ‘the Superannuation Scheme for Hospital Officers and Nurses,’ with Stanley’s reply, 16 February 1925, and a copy of her response; a heavily corrected draft of a speech ‘delivered at G.N.C. meeting,’ urging that ‘representatives of every branch of the Nursing Profession should be eligible to stand for election for this Council [...] an open election would be democratic.” Also present are copies of a few items of Bre
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