Analysis: A new book looks at the 'under the radar' role of Irish nurses in NHS hospitals the length and breadth of Britain
By Louise Ryan, London Metropolitan University; Grainne McPolin and Neha Doshi, London Metropolitan University
'They put an awful lot into the NHS, right from the beginning. In the 1950s, 1960s, there was an awful lot of Irish nurses then… hospitals would have been without an awful lot of staff if the Irish nurses weren’t here' (Nessa, Sligowoman who began nurse training in Yorkshire in 1957).
On the 6 August 1949 an advertisement appeared in the Connaught Telegraph informing readers of job vacancies in Britain’s newly established National Health Service. A recruitment officer, Miss Lavelle, would be touring the region in the coming weeks including Ballina, Westport, Castlebar and Claremorris. Any interested ‘young lady’ of ‘good education’ aged over 17½ years, should contact Miss Lavelle to arrange an interview for nurse training.
Ads like this appeared in all Irish papers from the 1940s to the 1980s and resulted in tens of thousands of young people heading to hospitals throughout the length and breadth of Britain to pursue nursing careers. Given that the great waves of Irish recruitment to the NHS took place many decades ago, those pioneering Irish nurses are now an ageing population so there is an urgency to gather as many stories as possible, before it's too late.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, Prof Louise Ryan on the contribution of Irish nurses to the UK NHS
We interviewed 45 Irish people between 2022 and 2023 who had worked in the NHS for Irish Nurses in the NHS: an Oral History. Most of the interviewees are now aged over 70 years, several are in their 80s and a few are over 90. Their stories cover the full range of experiences, from early student days through nursing careers, including lots of fun and laughter as well as some tears and tribulations along the way. This history offers insights into the tremendous but often unrecognised contribution that Irish nurses have made to the NHS over seven decades.
At a time when nurse training in Ireland was very limited and extremely expensive, the chance to train for free, and to benefit from live-in accommodation in British hospitals proved highly attractive. Furthermore, for ambitious young women, who wanted to pursue a career but faced limited prospects in Ireland, moving to Britain to train as a nurse seemed quite a straightforward route into exciting new opportunities.
From the Irish Nurses in the NHS podcast, five Irish nurses talks about their first experiences on setting foot in the UK
Orla, originally from Cork, while noting the difficulty of getting into nurse training in Ireland, due to long waiting lists and high costs, emphasised the apparent ease of gaining access to nurse training in Britain: 'There were adverts and I wrote off to some of the places advertising nursing places and there was one group coming to interview at the Intercontinental Hotel in Cork and I thought, "Oh that's great, I don’t even have to find them, they’re coming to me" and that’s after I’d been for some of the local hospitals and was told there was this waiting list…'
Following its establishment in 1948, it was quickly apparent that the NHS could not be staffed without migrants. During the 1960s, 11% of all nurses recruited to hospitals in the south-east of England were born in the Irish republic. By the 1970s, there were 31,000 Irish-born nurses in Britain, constituting 12% of all nursing staff.
A look at recruitment and training at one hospital in Liverpool, during the 1950s-60s, is quite illuminating. Out of 641 recruits, 350 were from ‘Eire’ or Southern Ireland, with a further 7 from Northern Ireland, 8 from the Caribbean, 5 from Nigeria and 3 from Mauritius. By contrast, just over 38% were from England.
From the Irish Nurses in the NHS podcast, contributors talk about the perception of Irish nurses working in Britain
Indeed, several of the nurses we interviewed mentioned that the English were often a minority in their student cohorts and some even dropped out before completing the course. For example, Aileen, from Co Mayo, described her student cohort in London in the early 1970s: 'Four English girls started in our group… One finished the course'. She went on to explain that hospital managers ‘did recognise that if they were dependent on the English becoming nurses, they would have struggled for actual bodies on the ward.’
Interestingly, the image of the Irish nurse is fairly prevalent in British popular culture and has featured in several hospital dramas. Brenda Fricker, who won an Oscar for her role in My Left Foot, began her career playing an Irish nurse in the long running British TV series Casualty and also had a brief role as a nurse in Coronation Street. Sorcha Cusack played an Irish staff nurse for several years on Holby City, while her niece, Megan Cusack, played an Irish student nurse more recently on the very successful drama Call the Midwife.
From PBS Call the Midwife, profile of Anne Corrigan as played by Megan Cusack
But despite the image of the Irish nurse in British popular culture, the actual contribution made by Irish nurses to the NHS has not been publicly acknowledged. While most of the nurses we interviewed felt valued and appreciated by patients on an individual basis, they felt that the overall prevalence and significance of Irish nurses across the health service needed greater recognition. Caitriona was originally from Dublin and trained in Manchester in the 1960s. She emphasised that recognition was needed: 'there should be a lot of honour given to the Irish… they made the National Health.'
Sinead left Kerry in the 1970s to train in London. She noted that the ‘massive’ role of Irish nurses was not acknowledged or known about in wider society. Indeed, it was this lack of acknowledgement that motivated her to take part in our research project: 'I’ve never seen it in the media… it hasn’t really been acknowledged, that’s one of the reasons actually I did the interview because I thought … the contribution that Irish nurses have made to the NHS is phenomenal …. we’ve made a massive contribution but I feel it hasn’t been acknowledged … Irish nurses had been under the radar'.
The sheer scale and significance of Irish nurses’ contribution to the NHS deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated. We hope that our book and podcast series will start a national conversation across Britain and Ireland about this remarkable contribution.
Irish Nurses in the NHS: An Oral History by Louise Ryan, Grainne McPolin and Neha Doshi is published by Four Courts Press. The Irish Nurses in the NHS podcast series is available here
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Prof Louise Ryan is a Senior Professor of Sociology and director of the Global Diversities and Inequalities research centre at London Metropolitan University. Gráinne McPolin is a radio producer and podcaster. She is a former nurse having spent many years of her career working in Britain's National Health Service hospitals. Neha Doshi is a PhD researcher and Associate Lecturer at London Metropolitan University whose research focuses on race and media.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
