Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Institute for Nurses was one of several charitable foundations established following the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Using money raised by women, known as the Women’s Jubilee Offering, the Institute was established to support district nursing, particularly to enable nurses to visit and care for the poorest in society in their own homes.
In 1893, Martha Loane, who had trained as a nurse in 1885 and had served at Charing Cross Hospital in London and later as sister-in-charge at Shrewsbury Royal Hospital, gave up hospital nursing in favour of district nursing. She retrained, gaining a qualification in midwifery, and began work as a Queen’s Nurse, first in Buxton in Derbyshire and then as superintendent of the Queen’s Nurses at Portsmouth. Following a life-threatening bout of appendicitis, Loane was forced to retire in 1905 but she spent the remainder of the decade publishing books and articles on the conditions faced by the working poor. While based on her own experiences as a district nurse, Loane’s books were in fact compiled by her sister, Alice, writing under various pseudonymous versions of Martha’s name.
Loane’s books, including this, The Queen’s Poor, offered an insight into the conditions faced by the ‘respectable poor’, those who, despite their hardships, worked tirelessly to maintain a home. They addressed many aspects of working-class life and Loane became known as an authority on the subject.
However, many of the observations made in the books reflected longstanding prejudices towards the poor, particularly the role of women in the home. In The Queen’s Poor, Loane noted the central role of women in the household but blamed them if they were the subject of domestic abuse from their husbands. She also argued against government proposals to introduce school meals to ensure that every child was well-fed, claiming that if such an important part of the mother’s job was removed from her, she might decide to find a job and thus damage the hierarchy of the home.