Angels or aliens? Refugee nurses in Britain, 1938 to 1942.

In spring 1940 Annie Altschul, an Austrian probationer nurse at Ealing Voluntary Hospital in London, was forced to leave her employment. Altschul was later to become a pioneer in psychiatric nursing and in 1976 was appointed Professor of Nursing at Edinburgh University, the first from her specialism to attain this rank. In 1940, however, Altschul, a socialist and former Viennese mathematics student, was a refugee from fascist and Nazi oppression in her homeland.' Her exile status and political standpoint notwithstanding, she, like other nurses driven from their