The history of nursing has been dominated by scholarship which is either national in scope or largely London-centric in its focus. There has been little analysis of the developments in the nursing profession within provincial England. To redress the balance, this book seeks to provide the first history of nurses and nursing in the locality of Nottinghamshire. By taking a local history approach, this book provides a more nuanced account of how nursing developed and changed during the period 1830 to 1948. Its focus on the provincial demonstrates how the uniqueness of place supplies new insights into nursing history. For example, the book challenges the dominant narrative that nursing reform was initiated by Florence Nightingale, by showing how reform was well established in the Voluntary Hospital sector before 1860. In addition, the presence of a well-organised provincial campaign base for nurse registration in Nottinghamshire runs contrary to the traditional view that this was London-centric. Crucially, the book takes a comparative approach, situating nursing in Nottinghamshire within the context of national and international events, organisations, and movements.

David S. Stewart OBE D.Litt.h.c. DL was for some forty years a teacher and headteacher in the City of Nottingham. Having studied history at the University of Nottingham in the UK, he went on to pursue a career in special education. For the last fifty years he has been researching and writing on the history of children and adults with learning disabilities. Recent research has been on the Nottinghamshire Nightingales at St Thomas's Nursing School.

Pauline Woodhouse is a community historian and retired academic lecturer (Nottingham Trent University, UK) with interests in nursing during the First World War and local district nursing history. As a volunteer transcriber for the British Red Cross, she helped produce the online records of the First World War Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) members. She is a member of the Radcliffe on Trent WW1 Research Group, and has carried out extensive work on the impact of the war in the village.