Rules Regarding the Engagement and Duties of Karitane Nurses

This pamphlet belonged to Barbara Cook (née Coleman), who trained as a Karitane nurse in Auckland from 1947-48. She worked as a Karitane nurse in New Zealand and England for five years.

The idea for Karitane nurses and Karitane hospitals came from Frederic Truby King, founder of the Plunket Society, who in 1907 offered his holiday cottage at Karitane, north of Dunedin, as a licenced home for premature and malnourished babies. The babies cared for there did well on the strict feeding schedule and ‘humanized milk’ (a formula of cow’s milk, water, and lactose sugar) King prescribed. The Dunedin Plunket Committee was quickly convinced of the need for a permanent hospital for babies and young children, and the first Karitane Hospital opened in Anderson’s Bay in December that same year. Five other hospitals opened around the country between 1917 and 1927, all run by Plunket Head Office in Dunedin but with voluntary boards and local management committees.

Trainees worked without recompense and until the late 1950s they had to pay a tuition fee and buy their own uniforms. This meant that initially only young women from comfortable backgrounds could afford the training, although from 1950 bursaries were offered to support trainees. Numbers of Karitane recruits rose steadily from 330 in the 1920s to 714 in the 1930s, 1056 in the 1950s and 1119 in the 1970s.

For much of the twentieth century Karitane nurses were part of the iconography of the Plunket Society. Wearing crisp blue and white uniforms, they acted as ambassadors for Truby King’s hugely influential ideologies in hospitals and homes throughout the country.

Further reading:
Bryder, Linda. 2003. A Voice for Mothers: The Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907-2000. Auckland: Auckland University Press.
Powell, Joyce. 2007. A Suitable Job for Young Ladies: The Karitane Story 1907 to 2007. Palmerston North: Heritage Press.
Sullivan, Jim. 2007. I Was a Plunket Baby: 100 Years of the Royal New Zealand Society (Inc). Auckland: Random House New Zealand.
Tennant, Margaret, and Lesley Courtney. 2017. ‘“The Karitane” The Rise and Fall of a Semi-Profession for Women’. New Zealand Journal of History 51, no. 1, pp. 113-134.