THEY do one of the most important jobs in the health service and now district nurses are celebrating their 150th anniversary.

District nursing began in Liverpool in 1859 when a Liverpool merchant and philanthropist, William Rathbone, employed nurse Mary Robinson to care for his wife at home.

After his wife’s death he retained Mary’s services so people who could not afford to pay for nursing would benefit from care in their own homes.

Then, with help from Florence Nightingale, he set up and funded a nursing school in Liverpool specifically to train nurses for the 18 districts of the city, and so organised district nursing began.

Here, some Warrington district nurses of past and present share their memories.

As a district nurse in the earlier days you would see real grinding poverty in some of the communities you visited – even children in rags – but despite this, families were close-knit and supported each other.

They were often poor houses but with a very warm welcome. You would also see the extremes of society. In a single morning I once went from treating a diabetic patient in a tiny run-down flat filled with other people to treating a patient with the same condition living in a luxury hotel.

One memorable patient I visited in the early 1970s was a bed-bound lady married to a chimney sweep. When I drew the bed covers back to change her dressings I found the bed lined with newspapers there to stop her sooty husband dirtying the sheets!

Jean Pownall a retired district nurse, Warrington, from 1954 Equipment was not freely available and we had to improvise with items in patients’ homes.

I carried a Gladstone bag strapped to the back of my bike and took it into every home I entered.

There was a kit to give enemas, instruments used when handling dressings, thermometers, syringes and needles and a pack of cotton wool but nothing for a real emergency.

Instruments had to be boiled up, dressings had to be cut from a roll of gauze and cotton balls made from another roll.

The family could always lay their hand on an empty biscuit tin, which was lined with a piece of old cotton, filled with the required dressings and then baked in the oven with the lid laid diagonally on top. Necessity was truly the mother of invention.

Jenny Ellis, a retired district nurse, Widnes and Runcorn, 1988 to 2006 I Remember my first leg ulcer visit observing the district nursing sister doing a dressing and thinking that I couldn’t do this job every day – but I did, and I grew to love the work. It was a very special privilege to nurse people at home, especially the terminally ill.

We worked in all weathers and I remember panicking when I had a puncture on the Runcorn-Widnes Bridge – would I get to my diabetic patient in time?

Joan Kelly, a retired district nurse We worked mainly alone but help was available if needed.

How we would have loved a mobile phone in those days – life would have been much easier.

Although we were busy there were always incidents to make you laugh, like the time my colleague visited a patient who had a very distended abdomen. She told the patient’s wife she would like the doctor to look at her husband and would call back later to see what the doctor had said. On her return she was told that the doctor said: “Tell the nurse he needs a plate of stew”. Of course the nurse checked further about the odd request and found out that what the doctor actually said was: “Tell the nurse he needs a flatus tube!”