It’s always a delight to receive a positive review, especially from a former nurse who trained almost exactly one hundred years after the events in Louisa’s Lament took place. Her perspective on how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same, makes for a uniquely personal review.

Jacqueline was particularly moved by the injustice done to Louisa Ingle, an injustice that, as she notes, was never formally acknowledged. She writes with real feeling about the male-dominated world of 1880s medicine, the resistance to reform, and the women who pushed back against it regardless.

What’s especially touching is that reading the book prompted her to reflect on her own early career in nursing. While she found much had improved by the time she trained, she also recognised echoes of that same hierarchy, with all consultants at her hospital being men, and nursing remaining very much a vocation rather than a well-rewarded profession.

She closes with a question that perfectly captures the book’s lasting power: if nurses had been properly trained earlier, how many lives might have been saved?

You can read Jacqueline’s full review here.