250 A Short History of Nursing English hospital committees to English nurses has been that of employers of labour to their in- dustrial armies — unsympathetic and intolerant, on the whole, with some gratifying exceptions. The younger women saw and understood this. Led by Ethel Gordon Manson (who had been . . Matron of St. Bartholomew's hospital The begin- ^ ning of British and then married Dr. Bedford Fen wick) organization ^^^^ founded (1887) the British Nurses' Association, to include women of all schools. "The nurse question is the woman question," said Mrs. Fenwick at that time ; " we shall have to run the gauntlet of those historic rotten eggs." She might have added, "The woman question is the labour question," for so it proved to be. By that time the Hospitals Association (directors, all men) had a committee on nursing and domestic manage- ment with a subsection on which hospital Matrons were placed. This hospitals association had pro- posed a register of nurses which would have been in effect, a domestic arrangement of the hospitals concerned. The Matrons asked for a three-year certificate of training for this register. The men ignored their views and set one year as suffi- cient. The Matrons then resigned in a body from the subcommittee, and a long tenacious contest was on.
