Sister Dora of Walsall: A Life in Nursing with the Poor and Injured Victorian Industrial England

The story of the heroine of the England's Industrial HeartlandSister Dora (Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison; 1832 -78) was a pioneering English, Anglican nun and nurse in the industrial Black Country town of Walsall, Staffordshire. With little formal training, she became a skilled trauma nurse, and managed smallpox epidemics, pit disasters, and industrial accidents. She joined the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritans in 1864, taking the name for which she was ever afterwards known. In 1865, she was sent by her order to the cottage hospital, Walsall, a dirty industrial manufacturing town with coal mines, ironworks, tanneries, and railways. She remained in Walsall for the remainder of her life. She specialized in treating fractures, severe burns, and eye injuries which were commonplace among local iron and railway workers. Though infected limbs were routinely amputated, Sister Dora strived to save them, introducing antiseptic surgery and preventing gangrene through meticulous cleaning and after-care. When a new cottage hospital opened, she became its manager, instituting stringent hygiene regimes and properly nourishing her patients. The hospital became a model of efficiency. During the Walsall smallpox epidemic of 1875, she unstintingly risked her life in the care of thousands of patients . Beloved by the town's poor labourers, particularly the railwaymen, when she died in 1878 aged just 46 years, the town halted in mourning. A statue of Sister Dora stands in Walsall town centre-the first in British history erected to honour an untitled civilian woman.Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.