The profession of nursing, as we know it today, was relatively new. During the early 1870s, the idea of young women of respectable background becoming nurses became more socially acceptable.
Training hospitals and the Red Cross began to attract a growing number of dedicated, unattached women who could gain fulfilment by doing something that was both ‘feminine’ and worthwhile – though conditions were austere, working hours long, and the training strict.
![Opposite The Zulu War wounded arrive at the British military hospital at Utrecht in Natal [main image]. There was a lone nurse on duty: the 19-year-old Sister Janet Wells [inset]. right A wartime sketch of Sister Wells at work during the Zulu War.](https://i0.wp.com/the-past.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/post-1_image0-54.jpg?w=1290&ssl=1)
One of these fledgling nurses – Janet Wells, aged 18 years – was to have a remarkably tough baptism of fire, from which she would emerge as one of the nursing heroines of the late Victorian era.
![LEFT The Charge of the Light Brigade and [inset] one of the men who charged: Cornet John Wilkin of the 11th Hussars, photographed by Roger Fenton.](https://i0.wp.com/the-past.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/post-1_image6-15.jpg?fit=768%2C429&ssl=1)
Counting cities