Nursing

We hold a wealth of records relating to nursing in Edinburgh, from letters and certificates of individuals to training registers from hospital nursing schools.

We have a large collection of records relating to individual nurses. Please see the individual nurses resource list.


Hospitals across the Lothian region were responsible for nurse training. The resource list indicates the training records that we hold for each hospital. 


Many of our hospital records contain rich information relating to the everyday working lives of nurses.


Our hospital administrative records contain information relating to nurses’ training and management. 


We have compiled information on notable Edinburgh nurses as well as other digitally available resources on nursing in Edinburgh.


We have compiled a bibliography of texts that will provide an introduction to the history of nursing in the UK.


Please note that personnel and patient records relating to specific individuals and created within the last 100 years are subject to access restrictions under the terms of the UK Data Protection law. Please contact us if you wish to access more recent records.

We also have a vast number of photographs relating to nursing.  Please contact us if you'd like to know more about our photographic collection, or make an initial search via Trove.

Bangour Village Hospital was a psychiatric institution taken over by the War Office for the treatment of wounded military personnel in 1915 and again in 1939. We hold photographs of soldiers and staff, including nurses, from the First World War (available from the Heritage Collections Images website).

The Royal College of Nursing archives, based in Edinburgh, holds an extensive collection of material related to individual nurses and the history of nursing.

Royal College of Nursing Archives website.

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