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Most of Fair Mile’s many staff lived on site or in purpose-built nearby cottages. In addition to wages they received cooked meals, uniforms, board and lodgings, or an allowance of farm produce to take home, so they had virtually everything they needed provided for them. This was just as well because nursing staff were expected to work from 6am to 8pm, six days a week, and from 6am to 6pm on Sundays.
They only had one whole day off a month, and even this would only start at 10am. They were allowed just one week’s annual holiday, on reduced
pay.
Staff recruitment and retention was a continual problem for the hospital, especially amongst female nursing staff, partly because of the long hours and demanding nature of the work, and partly because female staff almost always left upon marriage. Initially nursing staff did not need any qualifications, and there was no formal training scheme in place until the twentieth century. By the 1940s and 50s the hospital had begun to recruit a large proportion of its nursing staff from abroad, either from Europe or from Commonwealth countries, a trend in nursing that continues to this day.
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