Book description
'It must be stressed from the start that I was not a born nurse.
Not every girl is. Not every nurse is either, however wholeheartedly
she may throw herself into the project once she gets going. Born
nurses can be easily recognised. They have a little something the
others haven't got which never seems to desert them however
desperate the circumstances may become'
Desperate circumstances were something Evelyn Prentis had to get
very used to when she began her life as a nurse. It was in 1934 that
Evelyn left home for the first time to enrol as a trainee at a busy
Nottingham hospital in the hope of £25 a year.
A Nurse in Time is her affectionate and funny account of
those days of dedication and hardship, when never-ending nightshifts,
strict Sisters and permanent hunger ruled life, and joy was to be
found in a late-night pass and a packet of Woodbines.
Brought up in Lincolnshire, Evelyn Prentis (real name Evelyn Taws)
left home at eighteen to become a nurse. She later moved to London
during the war, where she married and raised her family. Like so many
other nurses, she went back to hospital and used any spare time she
might have had bringing up her children and running her home. Born in
1915, she sadly died in 2001 at the age of eighty-five.
