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PAST AND PRESENT

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Miss Eva C. E. Luckes was the Matron of the London Hospital for thirty-nine years. She is perhaps best remembered for the establishment of the first Preliminary Training School in England in 1895, and her perceived stance against the proposals for the registration of nurses. This article illustrates that Miss Luckes achieved much more than that and was, in fact, an innovative nursing leader in advance of her time.

Nursing history is an amalgam of tales told, facts recorded, and deductions made on the basis of evidence analysed over time.

INTRODUCTION

In the nineteenth century many matrons of hospitals were powerful figures in an era when there were few openings for women to pursue a career in education, and little opportunity in employment other than for domestic - or women's - work.

Eva Luckes had been fortunate, in her family, her upbringing and in her education. She had a keen desire to help people and to become a nurse. She overcame physical difficulties in her school days and in her early training as a nurse.

Miss Luckes was appointed as Matron of the London Hospital in 1880 when she was 26-years old. Her achievements in improving the care of patients in the hospital in Whitechapel are well documented in the House Committee records, and by Holland and Treves. Her influence reached a wide public by her books and other writings, by her willingness to help nurses in England and abroad to establish nursing schools, and her insistence on preparing nurses for changing roles and on continuing development for trained nurses.

In her later years, Miss Luckes became ill with diabetes, cataracts and arthritis, and used a wheelchair to maintain mobility. She achieved her wish, and died in office in 1919.

PREPARATION FOR HER LIFE'S WORK

Eva Luckes was a member of a Gloucestershire family of Scandinavian origin. She was born at Exeter, in the year that Florence Nightingale was to take a party of nurses to Scutari in the Crimea. She was christened at St. Edmunds, Exeter, and confirmed at Coleford, Monmouthshire. The family lived at Stroud in Gloucester for two years, then Ross-on-Wye, before moving to Riverdale, Newnham.

She was the eldest daughter of Henry Richards Lockes, a...

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