Peter Bradshaw missed out an important cultural feature of Letchmore Heath (‘The Village of the Damned was shot here – then George Harrison bought a house’: our UK town of culture nominations, 23 January). Before Piggott’s Manor was sold to George Harrison, it was the preliminary training school of St Bartholomew’s hospital in Smithfield, London, where 18-year-old would-be nurses spent three months before being let loose on real patients – learning how to bandage, give bed baths and change bed sheets with the “patient” still in it (practising on each other), give injections (into oranges), present food in an appetising way and – most importantly – to clean.
Following this three-month period, we spent the next two-and-three-quarter years on the wards (as a form of apprenticeship) doing actual nursing work of greater complexity and responsibility. A far cry from the major cultural shift of today’s nurse training spent in universities and on placements.
Dr Liz Rolls-Firth
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
