The first days at the hospital were a punishing purgatory of drudge work, but many of the tasks were not so different to my duties at home: serving meals, emptying chamber pots, laundering bedsheets, washing floors, dusting furniture, stoking the fires and ensuring the lamps were filled. The head nurse, Miss Peat, was an austere and mirthless presence, constantly critical and enforcing her will with the threat of dismissal. I had been well prepared for the regimen of institutions through my years at the Belmont, and for working under harsh authority wherever I went. It was under her stern eye that I was then taught how to dress wounds, bathe patients and treat bedsores.

I was paid a pittance, and there was even less in my pocket after Mrs Dempster deducted a portion too.

‘You will contribute to the household while you remain under my roof,’ she insisted. ‘If you no longer have the time to carry out your previous household duties, then you must pay your way.’

It perhaps goes without saying that Martha was not required to contribute, unless one allows the endeavour of preparing herself for life as a wife and mother. Mrs Dempster was tirelessly on the lookout for a suitable match, talking about it as though the fate of the nation depended upon her success.

Her view of the world seemed so small, while mine was becoming ever wider. I shared responsibility for dozens of patients and my knowledge was rapidly expanding. I learned how to make and apply poultices, how to administer enemas and prescribed medications.

The medicines themselves fascinated me, the effects these liquids, pills and potions produced. Through careful listening I absorbed as much information as I could and purloined several medical textbooks from inattentive students, which I studied in their entirety until I fancied myself as wise as those who taught me.

‘The difference between a medicine and a poison is the dosage,’ we were warned, by way of impressing upon us the responsibility we had in dispensing powerful compounds such as mercury, quinine and opium.

I took pride in the care of my patients, and seeing a sick person restored to health partly through my ministrations gave me a sense of purpose and achievement like nothing I had known before.

The patients’ appreciation meant a lot to me too. They valued my cheerful manner, as did the other nurses, and as a result I earned the nickname ‘Merry Mary’. I got on well with most of my colleagues, though there were those who took a dislike to me for no clear reason, such as Gertie Cupar. Gertie was a haughty and self-possessed young woman who had started work at the hospital around the same time as I had, but who seemed to regard herself as my superior. I could not help but reciprocate her antipathy.