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. Nightingale regarded her as the best of her nurses and appointed her Head Nurse. Early career Born in 1802 in Shadwell in East London 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'. In 1853, after twenty-four years service at St Thomas' and aged 51 years old, she retired to her home at Maida Vale owing to failing health. Crimean War Her health had sufficiently improved that on the outbreak of the Crimean War in the following year she volunteered to join Florence Nightingale's team of 38 nurses travelling out to tend the sick and wounded at Scutari Hospital, having been recommended by Robert Whitfield of St Thomas' as "a thorough surgeon & a superior woman." She arrived at Scutari with Nightingale and the other nurses on 23 October 1854. Nightingale recognised her expertise and competence at once, and described Roberts after just ten days on the wards as being worth her weight in gold and appointed her as Head Nurse.