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David Geyer with a photograph of his great-grandmother Rebecca Strong who he last met in 1939 when she was 95 TWO hundred years ago there was no such thing as a professional nurse. If anything, it was a casual occupation which attracted impoverished and unskilled women - often prostitutes - who saw it as an easy way to earn some “gin money”. Some did not even wait until their work was over, getting disgracefully drunk on the hospital wards during night shifts. “This was pre-1850s,” said Dr Kate Stevens, a consultant nephrologist in Glasgow. “When nursing started out it tended to be people who were ‘also rans’ might be the best description. Often it was people who were in prostitution.