GIRLS’ EMPLOYMENTS.
B. G. (Employment in the Colonies).—We hope you will observe this answer, as you have not given a pseudonym. It is, of course, a very serious question whether you would do wisely or rightly to leave your present comfortable situation where your services are valued in order to seek employment abroad. So far as you yourself are concerned, it would seem probable that if you have made yourself useful to one household, you would to another. But in dealing with your employers a frank explanation would probably be best. Tell them that you have this strong desire to see something of the world outside your own country; but that you would not like to leave at a moment when, by so doing, you would be putting them to inconvenience. We can hardly doubt that your employers will meet you in a similar spirit, and will try to arrange matters so that you may leave England at the right time of year for emigration purposes. If you wish to leave this season, you should lose no time in taking lessons in cookery. You do not say where you live, but nowadays there are few localities without either a regular school of cookery or some evening classes at which cookery is taught. If you can make yourself a really good cook, Canada would be the most suitable country to which you could betake yourself. According to the latest report of the Emigrants’ Information Office (31, Broadway, Westminster, S.W.), cooks earn much more than general servants, £25 a year being frequently paid. In the north-west cooks receive as much as £5 a month, or at the rate of £60 a year. You should not leave for Canada later than September, as the winter, which is severe, begins in October. If you could go earlier it would be better, otherwise you should wait till April of next year. The British Women’s Emigration Association, Imperial Institute, Kensington, W., would advise and help you further if you would apply to the Secretary. You should also make a note of the address of the Women’s Protective Immigration Society, 84, Osborne Street, Montreal, and of the Girls’ Home of Welcome, 272, Assiniboine Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba. To these institutions you could turn if you wanted a lodging or help in seeking a good situation.
Daisy (One Year’s Training in a General Hospital).—General hospitals—the qualifications of which carry weight in the nursing world—almost invariably receive probationers for not less than two years’ training. Three years is an ordinary limit, and even four years are required by some of the best training schools. The only alternative course you could pursue is to enter some hospital as a paying probationer. You would be required to pay thirteen guineas per quarter; this would cover board, lodging, and tuition, but not uniform or laundry. It is possible that at the end of six months a paying probationer, who has shown an aptitude for nursing, may be invited to join the regular nursing staff of the hospital. If such an invitation were made to you, you would do wisely to accept it, for your position as a private nurse would be strengthened by the fact that you had undergone a full course of hospital training. We advise you to offer yourself as a paying probationer to the Middlesex Hospital, Mortimer Street, London, W., or the Royal Free Hospital, Gray’s Inn Road, London, W.C. If you prefer to remain in Scotland, you might apply to the Matron of the Northern Infirmary, Inverness. Here candidates are received for one year only and are paid a salary. This institution, however, is much smaller than either of the London hospitals above-mentioned, and could not offer you so complete a knowledge of nursing in all its branches.
Doris (Hospital Training).—Hospitals do not receive girls as probationers who are so young as eighteen. You must wait patiently, we regret to say, till you are two or three and twenty. In the meantime try to discover whether any evening classes are being held in your neighbourhood at which you could study ambulance work. Perhaps you could attend a polytechnic and learn other things as well, such, for instance, as cookery, which is a most useful subject for a nurse to understand. Indeed, if you occupied the next few years in obtaining complete expertness in all the domestic arts, you would find in later life that the time had been well spent.
A. E. T. (Situation as Under-Nurse).—As you are young and have not yet been out in service, it might be better for you not to come to London at first, but to seek a situation in your own locality. The Matron of the Girls’ Boarding Home, 5, Abbey Street, Carlisle; or Mrs. Chalker, Ladies’ Association for the Care of Girls Training Home, 8, George Street, Carlisle, would doubtless be kind enough to give you the address of some thoroughly respectable registry office in the North of England, through which you could seek a situation. You are too young to enter any hospital.
M. D. de J. (Veterinary Surgeons).—The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons does not at present admit women to membership; consequently women cannot practise in this country with the English qualification. There are many women who breed horses, and who, no doubt, are quite capable of acting as “vets” in an amateur capacity. But women have not gone further in this direction at present.