Susan Villiers

Susan Villiers (1863–1945) was an English nurse who specialised in caring for patients with infectious diseases in fever hospitals, also known as isolation hospitals. She was a leading figure in the drive for better nursing education and a better-organised nursing profession, especially for fever nurses. As well as being matron of various fever hospitals, she was on the council of the Fever Nurses Association from its beginning in 1908. She played important roles in various other organisations working towards registration of qualified nurses, better training and other improvements for the profession.

Family and training Susan Alice Villiers, born on 6 September 1863 in Edmonton, Middlesex, was the daughter of Mary Ann (née Sharp) and John Fitzpatrick Villiers, a barrister, and had a private education. Her middle-class family with nine children was not wealthy, especially after her father died when she was eleven years old. In 1892 she began three years of training at St Bartholomew's Hospital (Barts), London, and worked there as a staff nurse for a year after she qualified, until March 1896. The matron at Barts was Isla Stewart, who was known to believe that the best possible post-qualification training for matrons was working with the Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB), which ran institutions catering for the sick poor of London, including isolation hospitals. This may have encouraged Villiers to embark on a career with a series of MAB fever hospitals.

During the nineteenth century, the Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB) built a number of fever hospitals around London. While patients received medical care they were removed from crowded neighbourhoods and isolated to help prevent epidemics. These hospitals were for working-class people from poor quality urban housing. More prosperous patients would generally be nursed at home.

The Fever Nurses Association The Fever Nurses Association (FNA) was established early in 1908. Later that year, Villiers was elected to be on its first council. The MAB gave the organisation its approval in 1909. One of the FNA's main aims was to create a universal standard of training for fever nurses in suitable, approved UK hospitals. The FNA wanted these to be large hospitals with a medical officer in residence. For trainees with no previous experience they planned a two-year training course and, for general nurses who had already trained at an approved hospital, a one-year training in fever nursing.

She retired in 1927 at the age of sixty-three after two troublesome episodes with her health in 1922 and 1924. This meant moving out of hospital quarters. She went to live near some of her siblings in Hertfordshire, where she served as a magistrate in Stevenage, as did two of her sisters and a brother. able to promote "a strong professional policy with gentle persistence", and someone who "quietly supported the interests and rights of women" while rising to "the height of her profession".