Eliza Roberts

Eliza Roberts (1802–1878) was an English nurse who was among the first group of nurses to accompany Florence Nightingale to Scutari Hospital during the Crimean War.

Early career Born in 1802 into a working-class family, Roberts began her medical career in 1829 as an assistant nurse in men's surgery at St Thomas' Hospital in London. In 1840 she became a sister on George Ward, a men's surgical and accident ward. Dr John Flint South (1797–1882), a surgeon at St Thomas', thought that Roberts, by then a specialist in lithotomy and accident cases, had more clinical knowledge and experience of hospital matters than any one else, male or female, in the military hospitals in the Crimea. Robert Whitfield, the apothecary and senior resident medical officer at St Thomas' similarly described Roberts as the best nurse he had ever encountered, "one in a century of thousands, a thorough practical nurse". However, her management skills were poor, in 1848 her ward having the highest turnover of assistant nurses of any ward in the hospital. The 1851 census lists her as married, aged 47 and a Day Nurse resident at St Thomas'. Roberts nursed Nightingale through her critical illness of May and June 1855, on one occasion refusing admittance to Lord Raglan, commander of the British troops in the Crimea, who had come to visit Nightingale during her sickness. It was only when Nightingale called out who the cloaked visitor was that he was allowed in.

Roberts had skills that few other nurses in the 1850s possessed as by that period dressers had taken over much that had previously been the responsibility of the surgical sisters. Nightingale was impressed with Roberts' skill as a dresser and reported that the senior medical officers agreed with her that she dressed wounds and fractures more skilfully than any of the dressers or assistant surgeons. The Dutch civilian doctor Peter Pincoffs (1815–1872), who served in the Crimea from April 1855 to April 1856, described Roberts as Nightingale's "clever aide-de-camp". Nightingale later stated that she believed Roberts would have made a first-class surgeon and physician and in consequence paid her £65 a year more than her other nurses, receiving a salary of £120 a year.

However, despite the importance of Roberts' work at Scutari her working-class origin at times made her a difficult employee. Her crude manners and bad language jarred with the upper-class Nightingale. In addition, Roberts was barely literate and talked constantly, repeating the same stories again and again; yet she grew angry with others who tired Nightingale with their own talk. Although sober, hard-working and chaste Roberts had a quick temper and was quarrelsome with the other nurses and proud of it, Nightingale appreciated Roberts' nursing skills and experience over social etiquette and was therefore prepared to put up with Roberts' lack of social skills and manners. On her death in 1878 Eliza Roberts was buried in West Norwood Cemetery.