Behind closed doors : the public and private nexus of district nursing, 1885-1956

For most of the twentieth century, district nursing services struggled to make public the private work of district nursing, undertaken as it was behind the closed doors of homes and residences of people who were poor, chronically ill, or disabled. Two factors that in uenced this dif culty included making this work visible to the general public as well as the gendered nature of the work itself.This paper explores these factors by considering district nursing within the context of charity work and argues that the nature of nursing work and who the nurses were themselves, played key rolesin the success or otherwise of districting nursing services negotiating this public-private nexus.