This time, the proposal was approved, and for the
first time in Singapore’s history, a female employee
worked in the Medical Department.
In 1873, there was a cholera epidemic in
Singapore. It started in the Kandang Kerbau district
where the General Hospital and Lunatic Asylum
were situated. Patients from the General Hospital
were quickly moved to the Sepoy Lines. After the
epidemic was contained, the patients did not return
to the General Hospital as the Kandang Kerbau
district was considered unhealthy. They remained
in the Sepoy Lines, part of which was converted
into a temporary hospital. A new General Hospital
and a new Lunatic Asylum were erected in the
Sepoy Lines locality. The new General Hospital was
opened on August 1, 1882, and professional nursing
in Singapore owed its origins to the men who planned
the building and staffing of this hospital.
By this time (the 1870s and early 1880s), there
were already schools of nursing in the United
Kingdom. The most famous one, the Nightingale
Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital, London,
had been founded in 1860. The British doctors
who had trained in the United Kingdom, and who
staffed and administered the Medical Service in
Singapore, knew of professional nursing, and
they wanted it for the Singapore hospitals, especially
the new General Hospital. But their pleas and
recommendations fell on the deaf ears of the
administrators. They were told that it would be
difficult to recruit nurses from the United Kingdom
to serve in Singapore, and to wait and see if the new
General Hospital could function without nurses,
as had been the usual practice.
In 1883, the Principal Civil Medical Officer
(PCMO) (the equivalent of today’s Director of
Medical Services) and the Surgeon in charge of
the General Hospital tried again. In their reports,
they stated that the nursing in the General Hospital
was done by the hospital servants, and severe cases
were nursed by the Apothecaries and Dressers,
helped by other less-ill patients. This was
unacceptable. They proposed that nurses should
be recruited from England or Madras, which the
PCMO preferred, but was not attainable. Some other
alternative had to be found:
“The absence of proper nursing is a great evil,
and is especially felt by the inmates of the Officers’
Ward. For ordinary nursing wants, the patients are
dependent on the Chinese servants, and the bad cases
are nursed by the Ward Steward, Apothecaries and
Dressers (who all have quite enough of their own work
to attend to), helped sometimes by other patients. I think
that this hospital, considering its size and importance,
and probably increasing future usefulness, should be
provided with a female nursing staff. ......... With
regard to the class of women to be chosen, I would
recommend that they be selected in England from
a good training school such as the Nightingale
Institution at St Thomas’s Hospital or some similar
place. ............ The advantages to the patients and to
the Surgeon in charge of the hospital, as well as to the
Apothecaries and Dressers, from the appointment of
nurses would be considerable. ...............”
“I have been in communication with the Matron
of the Madras Infirmary to see whether we could not
be supplied with trained hospital nurses from that
town, but the reply received was to the effect that,
though they are to be had easily enough, they cannot
be induced to leave their country for the Straits.
This is a pity as the style of nurses procurable from
Madras would probably, for climatic and other
reasons, be found in the long run to suit us better than
we could obtain from England. I trust, however, that
early steps will now be taken to supply us in the best
possible way with a staff of efficient nurses.”