Sarah Gamp
As illustrated by Frederick Barnard
Sarah or Sairey Gamp was a nurse in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit, written by Charles Dickens and first published as a serial in 1843–1844.
Mrs. Gamp, as she is usually referred to, was dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk. She became a notorious stereotype of untrained and incompetent nurses of the early Victorian era, before the reforms of campaigners like Florence Nightingale.
The caricature was popular with the British public. A type of umbrella became known as a gamp because Mrs. Gamp always carried one, which she displayed with "particular ostentation".
The character was based upon a real nurse described to Dickens by his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts.[1][2]
References
- ↑ Donald Hawes (2001), Who's Who in Dickens, Routledge, pp. 84–86, ISBN 978-0-415-26029-9
- ↑ Summers, Annette (1997), "Sairey Gamp: generating fact from fiction", Nursing Inquiry (Blackwell Publishing Ltd) 4 (1), doi:10.1111/j.1440-1800.1997.tb00132.x