A note thrown into the fire: Norah Kirk's Mildmay story
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When Norah Elizabeth Hughes arrived at Mildmay Mission Hospital in Shoreditch in 1904, she had already talked her family into letting her train as a nurse.
A compromise, of sorts, after they objected to her plans to work on the mission field. She had spent a year at a Church Mission Society institute while she waited to reach the minimum age. When she finally came for interview, Miss Cattell told her she was still too young. Norah said she'd apply somewhere else. The matron gave her a piercing look. "Well then, we'll take you."
Norah trained at Mildmay for three years. The work covered children's wards, men's wards, women's wards, and outpatients. She received no salary for most of her training; her father sent £1 a month from Dublin to cover shoes, stockings, laundry, and the occasional bus ride. Often there was no money left for an outing at all. The churchyard nearby had a few iron seats.
Eighteen months in, she was struck down with acute appendicitis and operated on. While she was recovering in bed, a young doctor on the ward, John Kirk, who had joined Mildmay from Edinburgh a few days after Norah arrived, sent her a book with a small note inside. The ward sister demanded to see the note. Before she could read it, Norah called over a patient who was up and about, asked her to tear it in pieces and put it in the fire. She did. The matron was not amused.
What followed, the engagement announced by the matron herself to the assembled nurses and servants while Norah was absent, the proposal conducted in the matron's private room, is told in Norah's own words, written later in life for her children. Her verdict on the matron who had harangued her over the impropriety of receiving a note from a junior doctor: "poor old maid that she was, but she then gave in... She turned trumps in the end."
John Kirk sailed to New Zealand when he finished his post at Mildmay. Norah remained for her final year. She qualified in October 1907. A year later, she sailed to Hong Kong, married John, and the two of them set out for Canton, where they would spend two decades running a medical mission, training nurses, surviving floods and fires, and building something that lasted long after they left.
Her training at Mildmay, she wrote, was "sound and thorough in every department." She put it to use for the rest of her life.
Norah's story is part of our Staff Stories archive, compiled with the invaluable help of her grandson, Ian W.
Read Norah's story in full, including letters from Canton and tributes from colleagues: