Figure 23. Student nurse Susan Petty relaxes after a day on the wards by playing ping-pong -- with her cap on! Library of Congress.
It turns out that nurses had a number of tricks they used to keep their caps securely on their heads. The first is the long, white bobby pin, sold specifically for nurses' caps. The second was a home-made contrivance known as the "brain patch" or "angel patch." These patches varied widely in their construction but had the same essential function: The patch was fastened to the hair and the cap was fastened to the patch. Here is how one nurse described the process:
You attached [your cap] to a little knitted thing that you put on your head. We called it a brain patch. You put a long bobby pin through the cap and attached it to the brain patch that you had in your hair. My big Sister knitted me my first brain patch. [11]
Other brain patches were made of wads of tissue, gauze, Telfa pads, or multiple bobby pins, and some nurses used long hat pins or safety pins instead of bobby pins to fasten the brain patch to the cap (Figure 24). Another secret was that as caps became smaller and no longer contained the hair, some nurses wore an invisible hair net to "keep those unruly hairs from getting into trouble."[12]
Figure 24. A 1950s student tries to keep her cap in place. Library of Congress.
As early as 1898, nurses began to worry that wearing a cap would contribute to baldness [15]:
The time has come when a cap on the head indoors is suggestive of baldness. There is a very stiff nurses cap which is accused of making rings of baldness right around the head. If nurses continue to wear caps from choice, the time may come when it will be a necessity. Maybe it is so now with the oldest of us. How I should like to lift up a few caps and peep!
Cap Maintenance
Caps were notoriously difficult to keep looking clean and tidy. The Philadelphia Hospital's double-frilled cap was so difficult to clean that all laundering was done by several generations of the same local family using a special starch.
Starch was used to "stiffen caps into gravity defying peaks, while also sealing the fabric against the penetration of dirt, lowering surface friction, and thus lengthening the life of the fabric."[7]
Caps that were formed from flat pieces of linen were dipped in copious amounts of blue liquid starch and pressed, wrinkle-free, onto a flat surface. Nurses used various surfaces for cap-drying, such as a refrigerator door, a mirror, or a marble shower wall, from which the caps were easy to peel when dry, and then ironed and folded them into the proper shape.
Some schools took pity on their students and switched to more laundry-friendly caps. In 1906, the Illinois Training School for Nurses, despite tradition and custom, decided to make the lives of its students easier with a change of cap design. "For the old-time organdy cap with its knife-pleated border that each nurse was forced to construct so meticulously each 'cap night,' was substituted one of washable muslin
What Did the Cap Symbolize?
Ask 10 nurses what their caps meant to them and you'll get 10 different answers. Some would say the cap represents their service to humankind, and others that it symbolized all the hard work that it took to earn it.
In recollecting the feelings precipitated by getting one's first cap, a nurse said, "It was a big thrill, because when you first walked down the ward with your cap on, the patients would call you nurse."[17] In those days, the wearer of a graduate cap, with its velvet band of black, was accorded special respect by those still coming up through the ranks. "You knew who was getting off the elevator first" if a graduate nurse was around.[7]
The cap unquestionably represented knowledge and skill (Figure 25). The wearer of a cap was well taught and highly capable. As a symbol of this training, the cap might have been perceived as a threat by physicians who were concerned about permitting nurses to learn too much and become too capable. In the late nineteenth century, some physicians objected to the education of nurses, worrying that:
nurses would be 'overtaught,' that they would soon think they knew full as much as or more than the doctors, that they would form too decided opinions of their own. It was objected that they would try to study medicine while disguised in nurses' caps! [18]
Figure 23. Student nurse Susan Petty relaxes after a day on the wards by playing ping-pong -- with her cap on! Library of Congress.It turns out that nurses had a number of tricks they used to keep their caps securely on their heads. The first is the long, white bobby pin, sold specifically for nurses' caps. The second was a home-made contrivance known as the "brain patch" or "angel patch." These patches varied widely in their construction but had the same essential function: The patch was fastened to the hair and the cap was fastened to the patch. Here is how one nurse described the process:You attached [your cap] to a little knitted thing that you put on your head. We called it a brain patch. You put a long bobby pin through the cap and attached it to the brain patch that you had in your hair. My big Sister knitted me my first brain patch. [11] Other brain patches were made of wads of tissue, gauze, Telfa pads, or multiple bobby pins, and some nurses used long hat pins or safety pins instead of bobby pins to fasten the brain patch to the cap (Figure 24). Another secret was that as caps became smaller and no longer contained the hair, some nurses wore an invisible hair net to "keep those unruly hairs from getting into trouble."[12] Figure 24. A 1950s student tries to keep her cap in place. Library of Congress.As early as 1898, nurses began to worry that wearing a cap would contribute to baldness [15]:The time has come when a cap on the head indoors is suggestive of baldness. There is a very stiff nurses cap which is accused of making rings of baldness right around the head. If nurses continue to wear caps from choice, the time may come when it will be a necessity. Maybe it is so now with the oldest of us. How I should like to lift up a few caps and peep! Cap MaintenanceCaps were notoriously difficult to keep looking clean and tidy. The Philadelphia Hospital's double-frilled cap was so difficult to clean that all laundering was done by several generations of the same local family using a special starch.Starch was used to "stiffen caps into gravity defying peaks, while also sealing the fabric against the penetration of dirt, lowering surface friction, and thus lengthening the life of the fabric."[7] Caps that were formed from flat pieces of linen were dipped in copious amounts of blue liquid starch and pressed, wrinkle-free, onto a flat surface. Nurses used various surfaces for cap-drying, such as a refrigerator door, a mirror, or a marble shower wall, from which the caps were easy to peel when dry, and then ironed and folded them into the proper shape.Some schools took pity on their students and switched to more laundry-friendly caps. In 1906, the Illinois Training School for Nurses, despite tradition and custom, decided to make the lives of its students easier with a change of cap design. "For the old-time organdy cap with its knife-pleated border that each nurse was forced to construct so meticulously each 'cap night,' was substituted one of washable muslin
What Did the Cap Symbolize?
Ask 10 nurses what their caps meant to them and you'll get 10 different answers. Some would say the cap represents their service to humankind, and others that it symbolized all the hard work that it took to earn it.
In recollecting the feelings precipitated by getting one's first cap, a nurse said, "It was a big thrill, because when you first walked down the ward with your cap on, the patients would call you nurse."[17] In those days, the wearer of a graduate cap, with its velvet band of black, was accorded special respect by those still coming up through the ranks. "You knew who was getting off the elevator first" if a graduate nurse was around.[7]
The cap unquestionably represented knowledge and skill (Figure 25). The wearer of a cap was well taught and highly capable. As a symbol of this training, the cap might have been perceived as a threat by physicians who were concerned about permitting nurses to learn too much and become too capable. In the late nineteenth century, some physicians objected to the education of nurses, worrying that:
nurses would be 'overtaught,' that they would soon think they knew full as much as or more than the doctors, that they would form too decided opinions of their own. It was objected that they would try to study medicine while disguised in nurses' caps! [18]
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