Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The British Women's Hospital Committee was formed by members of the Actresses' Franchise League in 1915. Its aim was fund-raising for Allied servicemen injured and disabled during the First World War. The money raised was used to build and partially endow the Star and Garter Homes for totally disabled men and to fund the Scottish Women's Hospitals. The Committee helped establish the Nation's Fund for Nurses (NFN) in 1917 and the Fund provided an endowment for the newly founded College of Nursing and a 'Tribute Fund' for the relief of individual nurses during sickness and disablement. A separate 'Nation's Tribute to Nurses in Ireland' (Irish Branch of the NFN) was established in 1918. Annie, Viscountess Cowdray, NFN Treasurer and Chairman of the Tribute Fund Committee, presented and furnished a Nurses' Club for the College of Nursing; the Cowdray Club closed in the 1980s. A home of rest at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, presented to the College of Nursing by Sir John and Lady Martin Harvey and the NFN Committee, was officially opened in 1920. The administration of the Edith Cavell Homes of Rest for Nurses was handed over to the NFN in 1922. The NFN assumed the administration of the Queen Alexandra Relief Fund for War Nurses in 1922 and the Church of England Nurses' Guild in 1923. A Charity Commissioners' scheme established a Board of Management for the NFN, the Tribute Fund, the Queen Alexandra Relief Fund and the Church of England Nurses Guild, in 1930. The Tribute Fund Committee was then renamed the Relief Committee. The College of Nursing appointed a Nurses Appeal Committee to appeal for funds for the NFN through its journal, The Nursing Times, in 1931. The appeal was renamed 'The Royal College of Nursing Appeal for the Nation's Fund for Nurses', in 1955. The NFN took over administration of the Rest Breaks Fund for Nurses and Midwives and Snow's Charity for Female Nurses, in 1959, and of the Archer Convalescent Fund for Nurses in 1967. The NFN was administered by the Queen's Nursing Institute from 1980 to 1995.