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Josie Caulfield

When my brother was little, an ambulance came to take him to hospital. I remember the ambulance pulling into our street and I saw this nurse sat in the front and I thought, ‘What a wonderful job. I would love to do that.’ I was only seven or eight years old at the time, but that thought kept in my mind. I kept telling my mum, ‘I would like to be a nurse.’

In June 1958, I set off by myself on the train to Dublin which I’d never been to before. I made my way to the North Wall to get the boat to Liverpool. If I think about it now, I hadn’t a clue. I was very naïve.

Somebody must have been watching over me because I met a lady as I was walking off the boat and she asked me where I was going. I said I was going to Leeds and she was from the Catholic Nurses Guild, would you believe it?

When the nursing school started, we had to go to Harrogate, which was 20 miles outside Leeds. We stayed in the School of Nursing for three months and we were treated very, very well but treated as children. Lights out at 10:00pm and in the morning we’d be up, strip our beds, then sit down for breakfast. Back up to our bedroom, make our beds up and then go down for an hour cleaning before lessons started.

I worked in A&E for 30 years. I feel very lucky to have the career that I’ve had. Working in A&E you really see life – the good and the bad in people. It’s an eye-opener sometimes when you work there but I enjoyed the experience. I’m proud of the fact that I was able to work in A&E and to make such a difference. When I’d go there to work at night I used to think, ‘I’m responsible for the whole of the accidents in Leeds tonight, I’m responsible for all that.’

Josie’s story was collected for the Irish Nurses in the NHS Oral History Project led by Prof Louise Ryan and Grainne McPolin, with Neha Doshi, London Metropolitan University

Yasin

I'm originally from Syria. I was in middle school when I fled to Lebanon due to the war. I kept studying and manged to get a scholarship for a nursing degree. But after graduation, I couldn’t register as a nurse with the Ministry of Labour because of my Syrian nationality. It’s very challenging to find work in Lebanon for refugees. My only option was working informally in a hospital intensive care unit. It was very intense work – especially during Covid times – and I was working long hours for basically nothing.

Doris Lau

I came from Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia to train in general nursing at Lewisham Hospital in 1966, after secondary school. I came from a family of 12 children. There was no way my family could afford to send me to go overseas, so studying nursing was the only solution to go abroad to explore.

Henedina Gadong

I came from Santiago, Ilocos Sur, Philippines on February 10th 1976 to be an auxiliary nurse at the Royal Hospital. I wanted to come to the UK because I saw that our neighbours who had come had been successful and they were living an abundant life.

Margaret Elizabeth Jaikissoon

My mother was born Margaret Elizabeth Raghoonanan in Trinidad. She was named after Princess Margaret who visited the island on the year of her birth in 1955.  Her parents, Dolly and Sonny, were both sugarcane and rice farmers supporting a family of nine. In the early hours of the morning, my mother would tend to the farm animals, cook for the house and help raise her younger siblings. 
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