Daisy Bridges

Daisy Caroline Bridges CBE (7 April 1894 – 29 November 1972) was a nurse, midwife and British nursing administrator. In 1961 retired as the ICN's General Secretary and in 1967 she published a history of the International Council of Nurses.

Life Bridges was born in 1894. Her family lived in Surrey and she went to Cheltenham Ladies' College before she was trained as a nurse. From 1915-1919 she was a Voluntary Aid Detachment 'nurse' during the First World War and was Mentioned in dispatches.

This experience encouraged her to train as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital 1919-1923, becoming a State registered nurse in 1925. Bridges then trained as a midwife at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, qualifying as a State registered midwife in 1924. Over the next ten years she rose through the ranks until in 1936 she was a "night superintendent" as part of the recently formed Florence Nightingale International Foundation. She then went to Canada on a scholarship before returning to the Foundation's Resident Tutor.

In 1967 she published A history of the International Council of Nurses 1899-1964 : the first 65 years which she had compiled during her retirement.

Bridges died in St George's Hospital in London leaving instructions that there was to be no mourning or flowers.