City Link With TV's Sister Dora (12 July 1977)

I wonder how many people know that Sister Dora, heroine of the much-acclaimed television biography, was village schoolmistress at Little Woolstone and that in her spare time she tended the sick there out of sheer sympathy before going on to do for hospitals in general what Florence Nightingale had done for military hospitals only a few years before.

Born in 1832, her full name was Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison.  She was the youngest daughter of the rector of Hauxwell, North Yorkshire, who, only two years after she was born, suffered a mental breakdown from which he never fully recovered.

He was a stern, overbearing father, who is said to have hated his wife and daughters, but I think it likely that the stifling home conditions he created could have been partly attributable to his state of mind.

Certainly, he had a care for his son, Mark, who was born in 1813.  He educated Mark himself, then sent him to Oriel College, Oxford, and by the time Dorothy was seven, Mark was already a fellow of Lincoln College.

He went on to become a famous scholar and in encyclopaedias of the 1920s was still rating four times as much space as his now more celebrated sister.

Dorothy always wanted to be a nurse, but for years had little opportunity of breaking away from the family home.  Meanwhile, the local curate, James Tate, wanted to marry her.  She was not unwilling, but her father said “No.”  They were unofficially engaged and were generally expected to marry in due course.

James’s unwillingness to do more about it, however, seems to have caused a cooling-off on Dorothy’s part; for when her mother died in 1860, Dorothy, now aged 28, decided to break away from Hauxwell altogether and to make her own way in the world.

At about that time many village schools were being built in conjunction with the National Society.  One of these was at Little Woolstone, but it was meant to serve Great Woolstone as well.

It was built to provide 30 places for children aged seven to 11, which was then the school leaving age, though school attendance was not compulsory and many left before that age.  By the time they reached leaving age, the children were expected to be able to read, write a letter, make out a shop bill and recite the Catechism.  It was also usual to provide a small house for the schoolmistress, and one was built at Woolstone.

The Rev Edward Hill, who was vicar of both parishes, was the prime organiser, and when the school and house were nearing completion he advertised for a schoolmistress, at a salary of £26 a year.  Dorothy applied for the job.  Mr Hill must have been surprised.  Her station in society, though not exactly exalted, was a rung or two higher than that of the usual applicant.  He wanted to be sure that her father approved.

This embarrassed Dorothy in view of her home circumstances and she seems to have turned to her brother Mark for help.  In the upshot, Mr Hill was more than satisfied at the prospect of having the sister of the notable Mark as the village schoolmistress.

Thanks to a small legacy from her mother, Dorothy afforded the journey down to Bletchley station, from where Mr Hill drove her to the Great Woolstone Vicarage, where she stayed until the paint in the new school house had dried.

Though she had to scrub her own yard, shovel her own coal, and boil her own sheets, Dorothy at first was delighted with everything about the Woolstones.

She was free at last.  She was earning her own money.  Everybody liked her.

They did more than like her when, in due course, she also began visiting and nursing the sick.  A local couple wanted to adopt her.  She declined, but she accepted their offer of £10 a year and then displeased them by giving it all away.

This was her way of life for two-and-a-half years.  Yet she was essentially alone and the little private time she had was spent in studying Florence Nightingale’s famous “Notes on Nursing.”

There were also other experiences which helped to shape her destiny.  One night when she was out nursing she had her silver teaspoons and teapot stolen.  This greatly distressed her – more at the thought that anyone could do such a thing than at the actual loss.

More importantly, she had an attack of pleurisy and went to convalesce at Redcar on the North Yorkshire coast.  There she re-met and became re-engaged to James Tate.  Now he was in a hurry to get married, but when for some reason his parents objected he toed their line and the engagement was again called off.

Dorothy was now aged 31 or 32.  Similar let-downs have often driven women into convents for the rest of their lives.  Miss Pattison, as she was known to the villagers, left the Woolstones and in 1864 joined the nursing sisterhood of the Good Samaritan at Coatham, near Redcar, as Sister Dora.

The following year she was placed in charge of a hospital conducted by that community at Walsall.  There she began applying some of Miss Nightingale’s techniques as well as introducing some of her own.

Her success became so convincing that in 1877, during an epidemic of smallpox, she was made superintendent of the Walsall municipal hospital.  Her appointment was short-lived.  On Christmas Eve, 1878, she died – to the grief of the population at large.

She was only 46 when she died and she spent only her last 13 or 14 years in full-time nursing, but the good that she did in that short time lives for ever after her.