This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of district nursing charity, the Queen’s Nursing Institute. Emma Pinch talks to two district nurses who covered the city, past and present

EVEN with rain pelting her face and sturdy iron bike weighing a ton as she heaved it up Parliament Street, as a district nurse Beryl Delve maintained her strict sartorial standards.

Black lace-up shoes, black stockings and stiff starched collars, which had a tendency to dig into her neck at times like this.

It reflected pride in their profession, of course, but in Liverpool they were the smartest in the country.

“We had to be very immaculate in our uniform, especially in Liverpool, because we were all very aware it was the cradle of district nursing,” says Beryl, who qualified in 1951. “We had it shovelled into us.”

But the era left its mark when it came to career choices when she left school.

You had to do something the country needed,” she says, slightly wistfully, reflecting she’d have quite like to have been a journalist.

“The war was on and if I didn’t choose nursing the Government would have put me in the Army or WAAF.”

The training was long and arduous. She qualified in London after five years then came home to Stoneycroft, Liverpool, to look after her father who had come out of the Navy with emphysema after his boat was torpedoed at sea. She took further training as a district nurse.

When he died a year later, she was duty-bound then to care for her mother.

“I was just trying to do the right thing,” says Beryl, 81. “Daughters cared for their elderly parents. There weren’t so many nursing homes for the elderly or hospices then.

“There were a lot of single women around then, because a lot of the men didn’t come back. A lot remained single.”