4 bound, volumes of handwritten Royal Hospital Medical Staff Reports:

1881-1899

1899-1936

1937-1945

1945-1949

The following is a selection of the material contained in these reports:
The Medical Staff Reports, 1881-1899, contain numerous references to women both as staff and as patients. For example, a report on extra nursing requirements in the hospital states that, 'An extra-probationer is required in the Extern Department for constant duty in the daytime...[and] in the Typhoid Wards during the day time. ...It is most desirable that night-nursing of the top lobby should henceforth by [sic] carried out by a staff nurse instead of by a probationer as hitherto', 18 August 1898; 'The staff report that the increase in the number of Staff Nurses is really only apparent up to the beginning of the year[.] The Scarlatina and Isolation Wards were under the charge of three special nurses[.] As these specials were in constant employment that staff recommended that 3 permanent staff nurses be employed in their stead this was approved of and has been carried into effect[.] At the present rate of charge this arrangement saves about œ18. yearly for each nurse', 18 February 1899; it was 'Recommended that a Lady Student be admitted to the practice of the Hospital', 14 September 1889; it was noted that 'The question of the attendance of Lady Students in the Hospital ward was brought up through an application made by one of them and it was the feeling of the members that there should be no restrictions or objections made to their admission', 10 October 1889.

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Useful publications are R.S.J. Clarke, The Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast: A History, 1797-1997 (Belfast, 1997) and Peggy Donaldson, Yes Matron - A History of Nurses and Nursing at the Royal Victoria Hospital (Belfast, 1988).