![Mrs Wardroper at her desk](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Mrs_Wardroper_at_her_desk._Wellcome_L0000024.jpg)
Sarah Elizabeth Wardroper (''née'' Bisshopp; 12 November 1813 – 14 December 1892) was an English nurse who was matron of
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS teaching hospital in Central London, England. It is one of the institutions that compose the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Administratively part of the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foun ...
, London, and the first superintendent of the
Nightingale School of Nursing
The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care is an academic faculty within King's College London. The faculty is the world's first nursing school to be continuously connected to a fully serving hospital and medic ...
at that hospital.
Biography
Wardroper was born at
West Burton, West Sussex
West Burton is a small hamlet in the Parish of Bury and the Chichester district of West Sussex, England. It lies between Bignor and Bury on the Lower Greensand ridge, 4.5 miles (7.2 km) southwest of Pulborough. It is one of a string of Sa ...
in 1813. She was married in 1840 to Woodland Wyatt Wardroper a medical doctor in Arundel who died in 1849.
A 42-year-old widow with four children, Wardroper had had no nursing experience apart from looking after her own family, nevertheless her general level of education, good organizational skills and appropriate manner were sufficient for her appointment as matron at St Thomas' Hospital in January 1854.
Although nursing was still largely a disreputable occupation she made St Thomas' a model of reformed, professional, nursing and in 1860, with the creation of the training school for nurses by the Nightingale Fund at the same hospital, she was appointed superintendent.
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during t ...
selected St Thomas' Hospital as the site for her new nurse training school, largely because of Wardroper's qualities (and those of the enlightened resident medical officer, R.G. Whitfield). Nightingale, Wardroper and Whitfield worked together to establish the new school, the first secular training school for nurses in the world. Wardroper, however, was not so interested in the school. She was and remained, for Nightingale, a "hospital genius", for her ability to deploy nurses efficiently throughout the hospital and advise on the introduction of trained nurses in other institutions.
She and Henry Bonham Carter, as the secretary of the Nightingale Fund Council, worked closely together for decades to send out teams of trained matrons and nurses from St Thomas' to bring in the new high standards to other hospitals. She took visitors to St Thomas' to show how the reformed system operated, and visited hospitals on Nightingale's behalf which were considering the introduction of trained nursing. Her important role can be seen in "S.E. Wardroper, Superintendent 1860-87".
On Wardroper's death in
East Grinstead
East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, south of London, northeast of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the extreme northeast of the county, the civ ...
, aged 79, Florence Nightingale wrote, "The Reform of Sick Nursing and the Late Mrs Wardroper".
[''British Medical Journal'', 31 December 1892, pg. 1448]
A memorial to Wardroper in the chapel of St Thomas's Hospital was unveiled in May 1894 by the
Archbishop of Canterbury
The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...
, a marble bas-relief representing the
Good Samaritan
In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of interest in the study of ethics, morality, ph ...
sculpted by
George Tinworth
George Tinworth (5 November 1843 – 11 September 1913) was an English ceramic artist who worked for the Doulton factory at Lambeth from 1867 until his death.'George Tinworth', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ire ...
in 1893-94.
References
Bibliography
* Lynn McDonald (ed.), ''Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School'' (Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volume 12), Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2009, pp. 885–887.
* Pratt, Edwin
"Pioneer Women In Victoria's Reign" Kessinger Publishing, 1 December 2004)
*Wardroper's letters to Nightingale, and a few surviving letters from Nightingale, are preserved at the British Library, Add Mss 47729-33.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wardroper, Sarah Elizabeth
1813 births
1892 deaths
British nursing administrators
People from Chichester District
People from East Grinstead