Nurses and midwives in Australian history : a guide to historical sources / Noeline Kyle, R Lynette Russell, Jennifer Blundell.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Abbreviations -- Getting started -- Government organisations responsible for nurses and nursing activities -- Professional nursing organisations -- Private collections -- State and national libraries - Australia and New Zealand -- State and national archival records - Australia and New Zealand -- Museum, archive and manuscript collections for nursing history -- Hospital collections (museums, archives and libraries) - public and private -- Nursing and child/social welfare in asylums, refuges, charitable institutions, prisons and hospitals for the destitute, neglected or mentally ill -- Female religious orders and nursing: hospitals, maternity homes/hospitals, rest homes and refuges -- Midwives - Australia and New Zealand -- United Kingdom midwives -- Nurses to the armed services -- The dark side of nursing - scandals, crime, malpractice and mistakes -- General and nursing websites and other sources for your research -- Higher degrees and nursing history research -- International nursing guides and websites -- Nursing and allied health journals -- Images and artefacts -- Index.

"Nursing and midwifery have been the occupations of women for centuries and almost every one of us will find an ancestor who engaged in these traditional feminine pursuits. This book, written by experts in nursing history, women's history and family history, provides practical advice on how to research the lives of nurses and midwives, the hospitals they trained and worked in, and is a guide to the many public and private repositories where sources are found in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Nurses and midwives worked in hospitals, refuges, asylums, prisons, charitable institutions and were pioneers of bush nursing, established maternity hospitals and were often important health providers in small communities in past decades. The records of their lives are found in a wide range of places, and as well as online and digitised records, this book also points the researcher toward the myriad of documentary and private records which are useful for writing their lives"--back cover.