Women’s Labour, British Naval Hospital Ships, and a System of Medical Care, 1775-1815

Authors

  • Erin Elizabeth Spinney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.958

Keywords:

Naval medicine, women labourers, Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, historical geographic information system mapping

Abstract

This research note uses new methodologies to investigate the presence of women nurses and other labourers on British hospital ships during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Using pay lists, musters, and log book records, it is possible to track the work of women labourers throughout the naval medical system of care. The work of women on these ships challenges our previous assumptions concerning medical care in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Cette note de recherche fait appel à de nouvelles methodologies pour enquêter sur la présence des infirmières et des autres ouvrières sur les navires hospitaliers britanniques pendant les guerres révolutionnaires et napoléoniennes. À l’aide de listes de paye, de listes des membres d’équipage et de registres des journaux de bord, il est possible de suivre le travail des femmes dans tout le système de soins médicaux de la marine. Le travail des femmes sur ces navires nous oblige à revoir nos suppositions antérieures concernant les soins médicaux à la fin du 18e et au début du 19e siècle.

Author Biography

Erin Elizabeth Spinney

Dr. Erin Spinney is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John). She is currently working on a book project, Carers to the Sick and Hurt: British Naval Nursing 1763-1830, based on her dissertation and postdoctoral fellowship. She is an historian of eighteenth and early-nineteenth century British naval medicine with a focus on the history of nursing and care provision in the Atlantic World. (Contact: erin.spinney@unb.ca)

 

References

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Fontaine, Laurence. “Makeshift, Women and Capability in Preindustrial European Towns.” In Women Agency in the Urban Economy: Gender in European Towns, 1640-1830, eds. Deborah Simonton and Anne Montenach. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

Knight, Roger. Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory 1793-1815. London: Penguin, 2013.

Rogers, Nicholas. The Press Gang: Naval Impressment and its opponents in Georgian Britain (London: Continuum UK, 2007.

Spinney, Erin. “Servants to the Hospital and the State: Nurses in Plymouth and Haslar Naval Hospitals, 1775-1815.” Journal for Maritime Research 20, no. 1 (2018): 1-17.

Spinney, Erin. “Naval and Military Nursing c. 1763-1830.” PhD diss., University of Saskatchewan, 2018.

“A dishevelled nurse with her disgruntled patient. Coloured lithograph by W. Hunt.” (Wellcome Collection).

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Published

2023-03-06

How to Cite

Spinney, E. E. (2023). Women’s Labour, British Naval Hospital Ships, and a System of Medical Care, 1775-1815. The Northern Mariner Le Marin Du Nord, 32(2), 201–214. https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.958