Society of Registered Male Nurses

History

Before the Society of Registered Male Nurses was founded in 1937, a handful of small agencies, often linked to the co-operative movement like the Male Nurses (Temperance) Co-operation, placed trained male nurses. Men could also join unions such as the National Asylum Workers’ Union, which started in 1910, but all professional nursing organisations in the UK were for women only. The General Nursing Council had allowed men onto its registers since 1922, but by 1937 they still appeared only on a supplementary register.

Most male nurses trained and worked in psychiatric hospitals or learning disability institutions, or served as medical orderlies in the military. In 1937, just seven general hospitals in England offered training for men. The Society’s goal was ‘To maintain and promote the traditional dignity and status of the male nurse, thus increasing and improving the professional status and dignity of the male nurse’. From the outset, it aligned with the Royal College of Nursing, sharing very similar aims, and later formally affiliated with it.

Edward J. Glavin, one of the six founding members, developed a professional friendship with Frances Goodall, the College’s General Secretary, who advised him to create the Society to boost male representation in nursing. The first meeting took place at the College in July 1937. A second meeting on 8 September 1937, also at the College, enrolled more members and moved toward forming a student male nurses’ section. At that meeting, a proposal limited membership to men registered with the GNC, which caused a split between those present and men holding the Royal Medico-Psychological Association certificate, a qualification not then recognised by the GNC.