Twixt candle and lamp: the contribution of Elizabeth Fry and the Institution of Nursing Sisters to Nursing Reform.

In 1897, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee ofQueen Victoria's reign, a leading article appeared in the British Medical Journal entitled 'The nursing of the sick under Queen Victoria'.' Outlining the evolution of nursing, it described Elizabeth Fry as "the founder of nursing". For the author of an article in the Nursing Record and Hospital World in the same year,2 she was "the real pioneer of Nursing in this country". In the light of such unusual agreement between doctors and nurses, it is curious that a hundred years later, Elizabeth Fry's contribution to the founding of the nursing profession is, with very few exceptions, almost totally forgotten.3 The purpose of this article is to assess whether these claims were valid and, if so, why they are no longer widely recognized today. Elizabeth was born in 1780 in Norwich into a wealthy Quaker family, the fourth of twelve children of John Gurney, a Norfolk banker.4 Being dyslexic, she was considered by her family to be stupid and was unable to benefit fully from the