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SISTER DORA

Sister Dora was a pioneering nurse in Walsall in the 19th century.

She changed people's attitudes to hospitals and medicine - and left a lasting impact on the town.

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Pit disaster
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In the centre of Walsall, there is a statue to Sister Dora, with four reliefs on the base, which show key moments from her life. We have taken extracts from Margaret Lonsdale's biography, which we think might tell the story of these events. Click on the audio files to hear the recordings, read by Jessy Reid (with Jenna Micklewright, Ryan Cheshire and David Allen)

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SISTER DORA GOES TO THE BLACK COUNTRY LIVING MUSEUM

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​​Sister Dora arrived in Walsall in 1865, to work at the Cottage Hospital, which opened in 1863.

It was the first hospital in the town (apart from one attached to the workhouse); and at first, local people were suspicious about it, fearing that doctors would perform experiments on them. The nurses were Anglican sisters, and their nun-like habits also led people to fear that the hospital would try to convert them. Moreover, treatment was free, and there was a widely held view that if something was free, it couldn’t be good...

In time, Sister Dora managed to win people's trust in the hospital.

In Walsall market at the time, people could find a number of alternative types of medical treatment on offer.

There was "Ode Texas," for example, also known as Dr. Caitlin, who sold what he claimed were Native American Indian cures. Or his great rival, "Doctor Dick" (Richard Hill) who declared: "I'm Doctor Dick / Who cures you quick / I've a pill for every ill." 

A visitor in 1860 called Walter White recalled seeing dozens of stalls

exhibiting an array of glass jars and bottles, some filled with bright yellow liquid, some with various kinds of worms, some with a green substance looking like a preparation of cabbage leaves, some with bullets.

By each stood a glib-tongued orator, vociferating the virtues of his vegetable medicines, extolling the efficacy of his pills (which I had mistaken for bullets) and pointing to the ghastly exhibition of worms as the consequence of neglect of his warnings and recommendations.

DRAMA AT THE MUSEUM 

​In December 2024, a group of young people from Birmingham Newman University presented a "recreation" of Walsall Market as it might have been in the year 1865, at the Black Country Living Museum. 

The idea was to both capture some of the colourful characters of the time, and show some of the “competition” that Sister Dora would, in effect, have faced, in trying to win people’s trust in the new hospital. The different stalls were: Dr. Caitlin; a herbalist; a “necromancer,” inspired by the story of Theophilus Dunn (the “Dudley Devil); a pharmacist (promoting her husband’s new shop on the High Street); and Sister Dora herself, who (we imagined) might come to the market, to tell people about the kinds of treatment they could find at the hospital. There was also a woman who believed in folk remedies, and tried to persuade visitors to carry a rabbit’s foot with them, for luck. The traders did not simply try to sell their own wares, but sometimes denigrated each other’s offerings, too - as market traders often do.

Photos by Kate Green

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