Please let us know (via the Contact page) if you think there are other items we could add to this bibliography.

General Nursing & Military Nursing History


Abel-Smith, B. (1960) History of the nursing profession. London: Heinemann

Ardern, P. (2005) The Nursing Sister: A Caring Tradition. Robert Hale

Baly, M. (1995) Nursing and Social Change. London: Routledge

Bassett, J. (1992) Guns and Brooches : Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War. Oxford, Melbourne

Bett, WR. (1960) A Short History of Nursing. London: Faber and Faber

Bingham, S. (1979) Ministering Angels. London: Osprey

Brown, C. (1935) The Journal of Charlotte Brown, Matron of the General Hospital, with the English Forces in America, 1754-1756, in Isabel M. Calder, Colonial Captivities, Marches and Journeys (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1935; reprinted 1967)

Dingwall, R; Rafferty, A.M.; and Webster, C. (1979) An Introduction to the Social History of Nursing. London: Routledge

Evans, J. (2004) Men nurses: a historical and feminist perspective. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 47(3), 321-328.

Garfield, R.; Dresden, E. and Rafferty, A. (2003) The evolving role of nurses in terrorism and war. American Journal of Infection Control. 31 (3): pp163-167

D’Antonio, P. (1999) Rethinking the Rewriting of Nursing History. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (2): pp. 268-290

DeGroot, GJ. & Peniston-Bird, C. (2000) A Soldier and a Woman. Harlow: Pearson Education

Dolan, JA. (1968) A History of Nursing. 12th Ed. Philadelphia: WB Saunders

Hay, I (1953) One Hundred Years of Army Nursing. London: Cassell & Co. Ltd

Kendall, S. & Corbett, D.A. (1990) New Zealand military nursing : a history of the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps, Boer War to present day. S. Kendall & D. Corbett, Birkenhead, Auckland.

Mackintosh, C. (1997) A historical study of men in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing. Vol.26, pp232-236

Piggot, J. (1975) Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. London: Leo Cooper

Rafferty, A.M. (2006) The Seductions of History and the Nursing Diaspora. Health and History, 7 (2), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/hah/7.2/rafferty.html

Searle, C. (1965) The history of the development of nursing in South Africa 1652-1960. The South African Nursing Association, Pretoria.

Seymer, LR (1932) A General History of Nursing. London: Faber & Faber

Summers, A (1988) Angels and Citizens: British women as military nurses 1854-1914. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Taylor, E. (2001) Wartime Nurse: One Hundred Years from the Crimea to Korea 1854-1954. London: Robert Hale

von Arni, EG. (2001) Justice to the maimed soldier: Nursing, Medical care and Welfare for Sick and Wounded Soldiers and their Families during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1642-1660 Aldershot: Ashgate/td>

von Arni, EG. (2006) Hospital Care and the British Standing Army, 1660-1714 Aldershot: Ashgate

The Victorian Wars


Best, B. & Stossel, K. (2006) Sister Janet: Nurse & Heroine of the Anglo-Zulu War 1879. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books

Cook, GC. And Webb, AJ. (2002) Reactions from the medical and nursing professions to Nightingale’s “reform(s)” of nurse training in the late 19th Century. Postgraduate Medical Journal 2002 (78): pp118-123

Dobson, J. (1964) The Army Nursing Service in the Eighteenth Century. Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 14(6): pp. 417-419

Goedhals, M. (2008) Nuns, Guns and Nursing: An Anglican Sisterhood and Imperial Wars in South Africa 1879-1902. Studia Historiae Ecclesiastiae 34(1): pp.335-357

The Boer War


Bagot, The Lady Theodosia (1900) Shadows of War. London: Edward Arnold

Bron, A. (1901) translated by Raper, GA. Diary of a nurse in South Africa: Being a narrative of experiences in the Boer and English Hospital Service. London: Chapman and Hall

Brooke Hunt, V. (1900) A Woman’s Memories of the War. London: James Nisbet & Co. Ltd.

Craw, B. (1970) A Diary of the Siege of Ladysmith. Ladysmith: The Ladysmith Historical Society

Dixon-Smith, R. (2007) Christmas at Ladysmith. Family Tree Magazine, 23 (4), 10-14.

Driver, K. (1994) Experience of a Siege: A Nurse looks back on Ladysmith. South Africa: Ladysmith Historical Society

Girard, SM. (1983) Canadian Nurses in the South African Military Nursing Service: Some Reminiscences Forty Years Later. The Military History Journal. Vol 6 (1) South African Military History Society http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol061cg.html

Laurence, EC. (1912) A Nurse’s Life in War and Peace. London: Smith, Elder

Leather-Culley, JD. (1901) On the Warpath: A Lady’s Letters from the Front. London: John Long

Pope, GF. (1902) Nursing in South Africa during the Boer War, 1899-1900. The American Journal of Nursing. 3 (1): 10-14

Roberts, B. (1991) Those bloody women : three heroines of the Boer War. J. Murray, London.

Rolleston, The Lady Maud (1901) Yeoman Service: Being the diary of an Imperial Yeomanry Officer during the war. London: Smith, Elder & Co Ltd

Sykes, J. (1900) Sidelights on the War. London: T Fisher Unwin

Spires K. & Spires A. (2007) Nurses on the Veldt Ancestors. June: pp.12-18

Suttaby, F. (Sister X) (1906) The Tragedy and Comedy of War Hospitals. London: John Murray

War Office (1900) Nominal Roll of the Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service (Reserve) as at September 30th 1900. London: War Office

Wilson, S. (Lady) (1909) South African Memories: Social, Warlike and Sporting from Diaries written at the time. London: Edward Arnold

Wood, E.J. (unpublished) Personal Journal held at The Library of the Wellcome Institute. Accession 333131; MS 6034,

World War One


Appleton, E. and Cowen, R. (2012) A Nurse at the Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton. London: Simon and Schuster Uk Ltd (her diaries can also be sen at: http://anurseatthefront.org.uk/the-diaries-all-four-volumes/ )

Crewdson, D. (2013) Dorothea’s War: The Diaries of a First World War Nurse. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

Hallet, CE. (2014) Veiled Warriors: Allied Nurses of the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Hallet, CE. (2009) Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press

Macdonald, L. (1980) The Roses of No Man’s Land. London: Michael Joseph

McEwen, Y, (2014) In the Company of Nurses. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Meyer, J. (2015) ‘The Touch of a man’: Gender and Male-Caregiving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in WWI. [WWW] https://remedianetwork.net/2015/02/25/the-touch-of-a-man-gender-and-male-caregiving-in-the-royal-army-medical-corps-in-ww1/ Accessed Aug 2016

Stevens, J. and Stevens, C. (2014) Unknown Warriors: The Letters of Kate Luard, RRC and Bar, Nursing Sister in France 1914-1918. London: The History Press

Western Front Association (2010) British Military Nurses and the Great War: A Guide to the Services. [WWW] http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/the-great-war/great-war-on-la§nd/casualties-medcal/1140-british-military-nurses-and-the-great-war-a-guide-to-the-services.html#sthash.xYIkXmuT.dpbs Accessed Aug 2016

World War Two


Bowden, J. (1959,2015) Nurses at War: The True Story of Army Nursing Sisters’ Courage in World War II. London: Corazon Books

McBryde, B. (1985) Quiet Heroines: Nurses of the Second World War. Somerset: Butler & Tanner Ltd

Mortimer, B. (2012) Sisters: Heroic True-Life Stories from the Nurses of World War Two. London: Hutchinson

Starns, P. (2000) Nurses at War: Women on the Frontline 1939-45. Somerset: Sutton Publishing Ltd

Taylor, E. (1997) Front-Line Nurse: British Nurses in World War II. Robert Hale Ltd

Tyrer, N. (2008) Sisters in Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

Since World War Two


Griffiths, L. and Jasper, M. (2007) Warrior Nurse: duality and the complemtarity of role in the operational environment. Journal of Advanced Nursing 61 (1): pp92-99

McNair, EJ. (2007) A British Army Nurse in the Korean War: shadows of the far forgotten. Stroud: Tempus Publishing

Rushton, P; Scott, JE; & Callister, LC. (2008) “It’s what we’re here for:” Nurses caring for military personnel during the Persian Gulf Wars. Nursing Outlook. 56 pp.179-186

Scannell-Desch, E. and Doherty, M. (2012) Nurses in War: Voices from Iraq and Afghanistan. New York: Springer Publishing Co.