Labour of Love: The History of the Nurses' Association of Qld 1860-1950

In the late 19th century the job of nursing moved from low status male and female servants to become the work of educated women. An ideal rapidly developed of women who worked for the love of humanity and not for monetary reward.

Labour Of Love shows how this ideal of service and sacrifice influenced the nursing associations which sprang up around the turn of the century. They strove to raise the status of nursing in the eyes of the community by emphasising training rather than the need to improve poor working conditions.

Strachan focuses on the development of the Australasian Trained Nurses Association in Queensland, which was the first state to register nurses and to have a nurses' trade union. She traces the changes in nursing work over a hundred years and shows how the nurses' assocation developed into a fully fledged trade union prepared to play an industrial role on behalf of its members.

Glenda Strachan is a labour historian and lectures in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Newcastle.