'... a complex history told with consummate clarity, compassion and poignancy'- A.M.Rafferty, Department of Nursing and Midwifery Studies, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham This book explores the establishment of nursing as a profession for white, English-speaking 'ladies' in the last third of the nineteenth century, the class and racial tensions that developed as first Afrikaner and then African, Indian and Coloured women were drawn into its ranks, and the way in which processes of professionalisation further divided nurses. The book provides a powerful metaphor for South African society.