William Rathbone was a Liverpool merchant and ship owner who was, like many other Unitarian businessmen, very ready to use his wealth for public benefit. He was the founder of district nursing and, determined to do the best he could to ensure high standards of training and nursing, he corresponded extensively with Florence Nightingale.
(William Rathbone)
What made him choose district nursing as the target of his philanthropy? Rathbone's first wife died in 1859. He was a rich man so, when she became ill, he was able to pay for a private nurse, a Mrs Robinson, to care for her. But this made him think about poorer families and how little they could afford proper nursing care if someone fell ill. He wondered, too, how much they understood, in the Liverpool slums of the mid 19 century, about hygiene and health care. His first step was to pay Mrs Robinson to visit the poor and to provide what nursing and teaching she could. Then in 1963 he helped to finance a Training School and Home for Nurses attached to Liverpool Infirmary. One of the aims of this School was to provide 'District or Missionary Nurses for the poor'.. Rathbone's scheme was successful and soon became known more widely. As a result, District Nursing Associations were set up in other towns. In 1874 the National Association for Providing Trained Nurses for the Sick Poor was founded, in London, with William Rathbone as one of the committee members. Rathbone's concern for the poor extended to those in workhouses and he provided money, in 1864, to ensure that the Liverpool workhouse was able to employ trained nurses. He was able to secure a Nightingale-trained nurse as the first superintendent of nurses at the workhouse. You can find out much more about Rathbone from a book by Gwen Hardy, published in 1981, entitled: William Rathbone and the Early History of District Nursing. What made him choose district nursing as the target of his philanthropy? Rathbone's first wife died in 1859.