Priceless legacy

Press, 7 September 1989, Page 27

Priceless legacy

Nurse Maude is a name well known to Christchurch people, yet the extent of the service she

rendered to the city and to New Zealand is not often fully realised. She gave the country one of its most priceless possessions — the idea and practice of district nursing. Yet she also achieved a great deal more than this during the early part of this century. In Christchurch we owe to her the establishment of what became the Cashmere Santorium on the Port Hills. It was Nurse Maude who pioneered the idea of industrial nursing and care for factory workers, and her vision and work in the field of general social welfare pre-dated Social Security legislation by many years.

This remarkable woman was born in Ric-

carton in 1862. She trained as a nurse in London’s Middlesex Hospital and returned to New Zealand where she became matron of Christchurch Hospital. In 1896 she decided there was a compelling

need for the poor and sick in the city to be cared for in their own homes. She resigned her position as matron to take on the daunting task of this work by herself. She was based for a time with the Sisters of the Anglican Order in a small, corrugated iron building in St Asaph Street. Mostly unaided and always under-financed, she single-mindedly devoted her working days — often 12 hours a day, seven days a week — to visitng a growing number of patients. Gradually her assistant staff built up and the Nurse Maude Nursing Service became well known and applauded. After her death in 1935, a year after being awarded the 0.8. E., many

thought it was the end of a great era-

In fact, it was only the beginning. The story of the Nurse Maude District Nursing Association’s development and expansion since then is one of continuing achievement in the field of health care.