Nurse Finney.
While Sue Williams was browsing this website, she came across the story ‘Cutting edge of medical science’ which is about the creation of the pathology lab at Maitland Hospital in the late 1930s. The story mentions Nurse Finney as the hospital staff member trained as a pathology technician.
Sue got in contact with us – Nurse Finney is her Mum! More than that, Sue still has the notebooks her Mum kept when she did her pathology training, and she has a number of photographs of her Mum and other Maitland Hospital nurses.
Sue’s collection of items, enhanced by memories shared by Sue and her sister, Heather Goldman, provide the substance for the following glimpses of their Mum’s life and work while at Maitland Hospital from 1933 to 1944, first as a trainee nurse and then as Sister Finney.
Right: Studio portrait of Sister Nancy Finney, late 1930s.
HMS Maitland
In August 1933, only a few months after Nancy Finney commenced her training, Maitland Hospital held a spectacular event: the hospital was decked out as HMS Maitland. The newspaper report - titled ‘Pleasure cruise’ - noted that about 520 people visited the hospital. It described ‘twinkling lights and long deck-like verandahs’, ‘nurses wearing … little white sailor caps with their dainty evening frocks’, ‘a spectacular “Turtle Race”’ and ‘fortune teller’s rooms’.
There is also reference to ‘a popular feature of the evening … the ballet presented by six of the nurses … Smartly attired in well-cut sailors’ uniforms in navy and white, with chic “gob” caps, they performed an intricate land drill, followed by a rousing reel, the sailors’ hornpipe.’ (Maitland Mercury, 4 August 1933).
Sue Williams’ collection includes a photograph of the six nurses dressed as sailors. She recalls her Mum saying that they danced a hornpipe. It was the word ‘hornpipe’ that helped find the Maitland Mercury article.
The seven nurses in their sailor suits.
Nancy Finney is at the right hand end of the back row.
The other nurses are M. Edwards, Daphne Ford, Norah Elder, Muriel Glennie, ? Krieger, and ‘Bess’ Hayes.
Photograph by Cameron Studios, Maitland.
Nursing staff
The photographs Sue inherited from her Mum include snapshots and some posed photographs of nurses. Nancy Finney is in a number of them. As Sue explains: ‘I don’t know the names of many of the people in the photographs but they are all nurses Mum trained and worked with.’ Sue suggests that the nurses in white caps and long coats were probably from the isolation ward. Her Mum worked there quite a bit and used to talk about the children with polio and diptheria.
While at the hospital, Nancy Finney lived in the nurses’ residence.
A number of the photographs have either the isolation ward or the nurses’ residence in the background.
Photographs taken with the isolation ward in the background.
Photographs taken on the front steps of the nurses’ residence.
Graduation
Nancy Finney finished her nurse training in mid-1937. A newspaper photograph has her among other nurses from the lower Hunter sitting for their final examination. A couple of photographs of Nancy with five other nurses, all in caps and capes, are probably graduation photographs. They have similarities to nurses’ graduation photographs in the Maitland Hospital Collection.
Pathology
In 1938, after decades of negotiation and lobbying, Maitland Hospital opened a dedicated pathology laboratory. Dr Ethel Byrne, already the pathologist in Newcastle, was engaged on a part-time basis. She visited each week. Nancy Finney, by then a registered nurse, was trained as the pathology technician and as the staff member responsible for overseeing the day-to-day running of pathology. Sue Williams still has the notebooks her Mum created while doing her pathology training.
Sister Nancy Finney (left) and Sister Joyce Brandt in the Maitland Hospital pathology laboratory, 1938/1939.
Joyce Brandt became deputy matron and then matron of Maitland Hospital from 1951 to 1967.
Front cover and the first few pages from one of Nancy Finney’s pathology notebooks.
Marriage and family
Nancy Finney married John Martin in 1944. The couple had met through John Martin’s sister, Jean Martin (later Ensbey) who also worked at the hospital.
As was the practice, Nancy Finney was required to leave the nursing profession when she married. However, as Sue Williams observes, she was allowed to stay on at the hospital because she was providing special care to one of her uncles, John (Jack) Finney, who was dying.
Sue was born not long after her Mum left the profession.
After John was discharged from the army at the end of the Second World War, the family moved into a new house they had built on the family dairy farm near Morpeth. Three more children were born - Douglas (now deceased), Heather and Richard. All grew up on the farm where Nancy lived until she died in 1976.
Right: Nancy Martin (nee Finney) with her four children, mid-1950s.
Music
Music was also an integral and important part of Nancy Finney’s life from an early age. As Sue Williams recalls:
Mum was a talented musician. She could play the piano, violin and organ, and spent many hours over the years entertaining at concerts, playing for church choirs and generally entertaining her family at home with her playing.
New Maitland Hospital
In October 2022 a selection of the photographs shared by Nancy Finney’s family alongside a brief narrative about her time at Maitland Hospital were hung on the lift lobby wall near the new pathology department. It is a fitting tribute to Nancy Finney’s pioneering work.
Nancy Finney photographs and text in the Maitland Hospital at Metford, October 2022.
First posted: 12 January 2022
Updated: 19 October 2022