You can read the full story of Sarah Woodbine (so far as it is known at the moment) in our recent book Sarah Woodbine – A Black Nurse in Victorian Britain. Co-authored by David Gleave, Neasa Roughan and John D Ellis, the book is available as a paperback or on Kindle. Royalties will be donated to NHS Charities Together. What follows is a very brief outline (we want you to support the NHS by buying the book!) of Sarah’s fascinating life.
Sarah Esther Jane Loch Woodbine was born in Buenos Aires on 18th January 1871. She was baptised at St John’s church in that city on 23rd July the same year. Her father was named on the register as Joseph Richard Woodbine and her mother as Augusta Woodbine. The entries give no clue as to the ethnicity of Sarah or her parents but the given name of ‘Loch’ is extremely unusual and offers an invaluable clue as to her ancestry, something we will return to.
We next come across Sarah in the 1891 census when she is living at 59, Greek Street in London’s Soho area. She is one of over thirty boarders listed at No.59. Several were in domestic service in some form or other, one was a school governess, while the majority (including Sarah) had no occupation listed. Aged nineteen, Sarah was one of the youngest. Most of the residents were from London but others were from further afield, Scotland, France and Sweden are among the birthplaces listed. The entry against Sarah’s name originally showed ‘France’ but this has been crossed through and replaced with ‘S.America’.
The first indication we get that Sarah was Black comes from newspaper reports in April 1894. The Croydon Times of 11th April gives a particularly detailed report of her recruitment to work as a nurse at the infirmary of the Croydon workhouse. Under the headline ‘A Question of Colour’ the deliberations of the Infirmary Committee are given in some detail. The report describes her as both an ‘African lady’ and ‘coloured’. The committee members reflect a range of views, one saying she was ‘very nice indeed’ and another objecting to the employment of ‘foreigners.’ In defending her against this ‘charge’ one of the committee members protested that ‘she comes from a British dependency’ while another added that ‘she bears the English name of Woodbine.’ The committee may have been unaware that she had been born in Argentina which was certainly not ‘a British dependency’.
Sarah was taken on as a probationer nurse on a salary of £12 per annum, which placed her some way below the average pay of an agricultural labourer (about £30 p.a.). Although she would have also got board and lodging on top of her pay, this was still hardly generous and gives a clear indication of the (low) value placed on the services of a probationer nurse.
Sarah successfully completed her three years training in Croydon and indeed she ‘had the honour of being at the head of the list in her final examination.’ But some time shortly after qualifying as an Assistant Nurse she moved to the newly opened fever hospital in Hither Green. This must have been where she was working when she featured in a fascinating article in The Nursing Record and Hospital World. Under the headline ‘A Plea for Equality’ the article details how Sarah had come to England with her father at the age of fourteen with the express intention of training to be a nurse. Her aim was to return to Buenos Aires as a Charge Nurse with responsibility for training probationer nurses. She had told the paper that:
The Europeans in Buenos Ayres can obtain trained nurses but the natives live or die with no one to care for them.’
The Nursing Record and Hospital World, 8th October 1898
In order to fulfil her ambition she needed to gain experience as a Charge Nurse in Britain but, in spite of having made a very positive impression in Croydon and doing well in her final examination:
She finds it most difficult to obtain a position of responsibility, owing as she says to her colour.
ibid.
The article finished with the plea:
she asks for no especial privileges, but only that her colour shall not stand in the way of her obtaining an appointment for which she is qualified
ibid.
They clearly hoped for a positive response, what they got instead was a letter from ‘A English Girl’ who described the plea for equality as ‘most unfair’ since:
How would any English woman stoop to be a under-nurse taking orders from a black woman … I for one, and there are others, I know, would deem it as insult to be put to work even on an equality with her, let alone to be an under-nurse. She must not expect any English nurse to work under her.
The Nursing Record and Hospital World, 15th October 1898
Fortunately, not all readers shared the bigoted views of ‘A English Girl’ and several leapt to support Sarah in subsequent letters. ‘Justice’ wrote pointing out the ‘pluck’ it must have taken to come to England and she wondered:
‘how many English nurses would expatriate themselves and go to live in a foreign country, where in many instances they were plainly shown that their presence was resented.
The Nursing Record and Hospital World, 22nd October 1898
Another letter praised Sarah’s ‘courage and resolution’ and yet another described ‘A English Girl’ as ‘unfit material of which to make an English Nurse [on account of] her ignorance and narrow mindedness.’
Whether it was coincidence or not, the Bristol Times and Mirror reported in it’s 12th November 1898 edition that Sarah Woodbine was among those who had been appointed as a Charge Nurse by the Eastville workhouse hospital in Bristol.
Clearly Sarah was someone who wanted to broaden her qualifications and experience at every opportunity because in February 1899 she boarded a ship at Liverpool. We learn from an item in the Nursing Record and Hospital World that Sarah was taking up a post as Sister at the Princess Christian Hospital in Sierra Leone.
She was back in England in 1901 when the census was taken. She was working at the Grove hospital in Tooting, south-west London (now part of St.Georges hospital, many of the buildings Sarah would have been familiar with were still in use by the NHS as recently as 2021). Once again her presence confused the authorities as her claim to be a ‘naturalised British subject’ was crossed out and replaced with ‘foreign subject’. Who made the change and why they did so is unknown, perhaps they were confused by her birthplace, shown as South America, or maybe it was her ethnicity that caused them to doubt she was British. How Sarah regarded the change or whether she was even made aware of it is also unknown.
In October 1901 there is a further mention of Sarah in a newspaper. On 26th October the Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser reported that Sarah was one of two candidates selected for an interview for the role of nurse at the infirmary of Dorking Union Workhouse. We do not know if she was successful but we do know that she must have obtained an additional qualification at some point along the way as she had a ‘maternity certificate’ which was a requirement for this particular role.
In March 1903 Sarah appears on the passenger list of a ship, the Clyde, sailing to Buenos Aires. This must have been a fleeting visit home as in June 1903 she appears on another passenger list, this time she was bound for Sierra Leone, again.
After this date we have found no further trace of Sarah Woodbine and so what became of her remains a mystery – for now!
One mystery we were able to clear up was how Sarah, a British national, came to be living in the capital of Argentina. It was a tortuous journey for us but our research into Sarah’s ancestry eventually led us to two closely connected families, the Woodbines and the Lochs, who were the owners of enslaved people on Jamaica. This is the only plausible explanation of Sarah’s very unusual given name of ‘Loch’. Although we were unable to find proof of inter-marriage between the two families, we were able to establish that Sarah’s father and two of her grandparents were born on Jamaica and so her claim to be British, something she asserted regularly, was 100% correct.
We all know the part played by nurses from overseas in the early years of the NHS but Sarah Woodbine was working in Britain in 1894 well over fifty years earlier. Her inspirational story is important as so few Black nurses from before 1900 are known to us. The name of Sarah Woodbine can now be added to what is a very short list.