She 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.

 

Sister Dora faced an uphill struggle, to win people's trust in the hospital.

 

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

 

There was Ode Texan, a.k.a. “Dr. Caitlin,” who claimed xxx.

 

This led us to create the “market fair” at the museum. The idea was to both capture some of the colourful characters of the time, and set out 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 (xxx, 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.