Osburn, Lucy (1836 - 1891)

Lucy Osburn arrived in Sydney on 5 March 1868 and a week later was supervising the nursing of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Victoria’s second son, who had been shot in an attempted assassination. She soon set about establishing the fundamentals of Nightingale nursing at the Infirmary. She progressively dismissed the male nurses (wardsmen) and replaced them with female nurses. She introduced training on and off the wards for the nurses. She introduced a hierarchical system of management whereby she was in supreme control of nursing and the nurses. Strict obedience to nursing superiors and medical orders was enforced. Lucy Osburn also introduced the two-tiered system of training she had experienced at St Thomas’s: Nurses from the working class entered as ordinary probationers and were expected to remain nurses for the rest of their careers. Sister Probationers were middle class women who trained to become Sisters (ward managers) and could aim to become Lady Superintendents or Matrons.

Lucy Osburn’s main problems in her first years were the decrepit building which housed the main wards and that her responsibility and powers were poorly defined. She could do little without the cooperation of the Superintendent who controlled the male staff, or the House Committee who could authorise effective cleaning. She was soon blamed for the dirty, vermin-infested wards under her control but had insufficient power to effectively clean the wards.

Soon after her arrival, Lucy Osburn temporarily rejected the title of Lady Superintendent for one with religious connotations, Lady Superior. It was one of a number of acts which aroused the hostility of the powerful Evangelical faction who became convinced she was trying to set up a quasi-Catholic “nunnery” at the hospital. Accused of ordering the burning of bibles, she was vindicated by a Commission of Inquiry in 1870 but Evangelical hostility remained. With the strong support of Henry Parkes and other influential friends, Lucy Osburn survived numerous other public inquiries, most notably the First Report into the Infirmary by the 1873 Royal Commission into Public Charities. After this Report, her powers were clarified. The role of the hospital as a place of acute care was confirmed with its change of name to Sydney Hospital in 1881.

Lucy Osburn’s nursing register, where details of nursing students were recorded, indicates her avoidance of direct praise of her staff. Nevertheless, she was a highly practical manager who insisted on good living conditions for the nurses. Her concern for patients is less obvious in her writings but underlay her actions. Her inexperience, sense of social superiority and insensitivity meant that she failed to exercise effective authority over the Head Nurses (Sisters) who had accompanied her from Britain. They were soon quarrelling and placed Nightingale nursing in disrepute. One became pregnant and had to leave; only one of the other four stayed loyal. At the end of her three year contract, Lucy Osburn agreed to stay on only if the other three Sisters’ contracts were not renewed. The hospital and government acceded to her wish, much to the anger of Florence Nightingale and her supporters.

Lucy Osburn’s achievement was to reform nursing practice and to train colonial nurses to spread the ideal of trained, disciplined nursing throughout the Australian colonies. These achievements were marred by continual criticism of her autocratic style of management. Finally in 1884, during one of her many bouts of illness and facing a public call for her resignation, she resigned. She travelled extensively then finally settled back in London. In 1886-87 she retrained with the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association, which nursed the poor in their own homes. She was then appointed Superintendent of the Newington and Walworth District among the slums of London’s East End. She was partly reconciled with Florence Nightingale but joined the (later Royal) British Nursing Association which became embroiled in the bitter ‘battle of the nurses’, advocating state registration of nurses against Florence Nightingale’s wishes.

Early in 1891 Lucy Osburn resigned, too ill to work. She went to stay with her sister Annie Osburn who headed a successful girls school in Harrogate, Yorkshire. There, just before Christmas 1891, Lucy Osburn died. Her death certificate listed the cause as diabetes. Her death received scant acknowledgment by Sydney Hospital but she has been consistently acknowledged by her admirers and nurses as the founder of Nightingale nursing in Australia. Among the many monuments to her achievements is the Lucy Osburn-Nightingale Museum at Sydney Hospital in her old rooms in the Nightingale Wing of Sydney Hospital.

Lucy Osburn was energetic, clever, and multilingual. She loved entomology, dogs, reading, and was a loyal friend and relative. She battled chronic ill-health with an indomitable spirit. She was sent to Australia ill-equipped and largely achieved a near-impossible task. Her success was in the transformation of nursing practice and consequent improvement in patient care, as well as pioneering high status women’s professional careers in public institutions. Her problems owed much to her ill-defined powers and her implementation of a strictly hierarchical, inward-looking system which emphasised obedience at the expense of staff development and mobility.

Chronology

1 April 1836	Born in Leeds, Yorkshire [N.B. this date has been incorrectly reported as 10 May 1835]
1857 - 1860	Employed as companion in Jerusalem
10 September 1866	Entered the Nightingale School of Nursing at St Thomas’s Hospital London to train as a Lady Probationer.
2 December 1867	Left England as head of a team of six nurses to found Nightingale nursing at the Sydney Infirmary in the colony of New South Wales
5 March 1868	Arrived in Sydney as Lady Superintendent of the Sydney Infirmary
12 March 1868	Prince Alfred’s attempted assassination – Lucy Osburn supervised his nursing at Government House
1870	Vindicated by the Inquiry into allegations by the Protestant Standard that she was anti-Protestant and favoured Catholics.
1873	Royal Commission into Public Charities, First Report 1873 which largely vindicated Lucy Osburn’s management
November 1884	Lucy Osburn’s resigned due to illness after renewed allegations of mismanagement
1886	Re-trained as Superintendent of District Nursing with the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association in London
1887 - 1891	Superintendent of Nursing, Newington and Walworth district, London
22 December 1891	Died

• Nightingale, Florence (1820 - 1910) - Lucy Osburn pioneered Florence Nightingale's system of nursing in Australia.
• Roberts, Alfred (1823 - 1898) - Alfred Roberts was an honorary surgeon at Sydney Hospital when he campaigned for the introduction of Nightingale nursing in New South Wales. He later opposed Lucy Osburn and was a founder of (later Royal) Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney.
• Holden, Frances Gillam (1843 - 1924) - Frances Holden, Sister Probationer, was dismissed by Lucy Osburn before completing her training at Sydney Hospital. Five years later Holden became Lady Superintendent of the Childrens Hospital in Sydney.