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20 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com July 15–August 12, 2019 assignment: in his own words, "to go into one of the poorest districts of Liverpool and try, in nursing the poor, to relieve suffering and to teach them the rules of health and comfort." Naturally, he paid all her expenses. A LETTER TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE A t first, Robinson found this work almost too overwhelming to bear, but by the end of her initial three-month engagement, Rathbone said, "she came back saying that the amount of misery she could relieve was so satisfactory that nothing would induce her to go back to pri- vate nursing, if I were willing to continue the work." Rathbone was willing and eager to expand this project to other areas of Liverpool, but he soon discovered that finding additional nurses of Robinson's caliber was no easy task. There was still no standardized nurse training, licensure or registration in Great Britain, so the quality of indi- vidual nurses varied widely. In 1861, Rathbone wrote to Florence Nightingale at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, asking for her advice. She dismissed the idea of try- ing to recruit experienced nurses, suggesting that he establish a brand- new training program instead. Rathbone followed Nightingale's recommendations with a will. Within a year, he had founded the Liverpool Training School and Home for Nurses at the Royal Liverpool Infirmary, entirely at his own expense. Although Nightingale was not directly involved in this project beyond her initial proposal, she and Rathbone went on to become lifelong corre- spondents and friends. "In any matter of nursing, Miss Nightingale is my Pope and I believe in her infallibility," he later wrote. THE DISTRICT NURSE B y 1863, Rathbone's program had produced 18 trained nurses. Each was assigned to a specific Liverpool district, reporting to a lady superintendent who was responsible for each nurse's room and board. Rathbone's second wife, Emily, whom he married in February 1862, later became one of these lady superintendents. (Later in life, she also became a crusader for school nursing in Liverpool.) From the beginning, the role of the district nurse was to promote health rather than simply treating the sick. Guidance in proper nutrition, ade- quate heat and housekeeping was as important to the work as were poul- tices and bandages. Mary Robinson noted in 1860 that "by suitable advice there is a very great improvement in many houses as to cleanliness." The Slippery Slope to Tragedy This page, top: Queen's Nurses outside Marlborough House, 1901. Above: District nurse Jenny Wolfe in Gotherington, Gloucestershire, 1895. Opposite page, top: Logo of Queen Victoria District Nursing Association. Below: Queen Victoria during her Diamond Jubilee, 1897. Photos courtesy QNI Heritage (qniheritage.org.uk).