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Tuesday 20 December 2022

Sharing Family Ephemera

My mother was a nurse. She trained as a psychiatric nurse in a small cottage hospital in Midlothian. Then she took her general nursing at the Western General in Edinburgh. Her elder sister followed in her footsteps in becoming psychiatric nurse and training at the same cottage hospital. 

My mother saved nothing. Fortunately, her sister saved everything (I'm sure there is a balance in there somewhere, but for this, I am not complaining). I visited my cousin last week. She was the one tasked with cleaning out her mother's house. Her mom and dad had lived in the house for 60 years. 

My cousin brought out the postcards and telegrams my aunt had saved. And as conversations go, we began talking about our mother's lives in Scotland. My cousin then handed me this gem:

My mum would have had one as well, but didn't keep hers, sadly.  I can imagine how often this little gem was used by each student nurse. Although we couldn't find a date of publication, my mum and aunt were in nurses training in the early 1950s (1950-52 as a start date).

I enjoyed seeing not only how much medicine has progressed, but just the depth of what they had to learn. 











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