Susan, it wasn't just the Red Cross. This was before it even came about, I think. In London, esp. Perry brings it out in her books. Yes, any woman who was a nurse was considered low class, uneducated, and treated little better than a slave, more like a scullery maid and they were NOT to have any airs of being above their station. To be sure, most at that time were low class, drunk a lot of the time, etc. but it was because the job itself was considered not much better than prostitution, so they deliberately hired that type of woman.

Along came Ms. Nightingale and her compatriots AND the men who survived because of their very real knowledge of surgery and field medicine. It was a long, hard struggle, but she and others prevailed much to the dismay of the "old guard" of doctors, etc., even upper crust society, including women, because it was just so unseemly for a woman to act as though she knew anything, esp. about such unspeakable things as bodily functions, disease, raw emotion, pain, etc. Polite society held them in great disdain, figuring that anyone who did know about such things AND worked as a nurse MUST be low class and not worthy of anything but their contempt, thus they MUST also be "loose" women!

It was 130 years ago, today, that Susan B. Anthony cast her first vote to test the law against women voting. All I can say is thank goodness for her, Ms. Nightingale and others like them!

kat