The Female Imperial Agent and the Intricacies of Power: British Nurses in Mandate Palestine

abstract:British women have hitherto been almost absent from the history of British colonialism in the Middle East, and particularly in Mandate Palestine (1918–48). By using an individual tale of a British nurse as a vantage point, the article explores the personal and professional experiences of British nurses in Mandate Palestine and scrutinizes their contested status. As women, as British, as medical practitioners, and specifically as nurses, British nurses present a singular type of local-level imperial agent who confronted multiple challenges to their identities. Empowered as imperial agents of health, biomedicine, and hygiene, they had exercised professional, cultural, and racial authority over indigenous people. At the same time, their gender, vocation, and marital status have limited their scope of influence within a male-dominated medical hierarchy, as well as locate them at the lower strata of British colonial society. Nurses' tales thus offer a unique perspective for investigating colonial power relations and the intersections of medicine, gender, race, and class.

nurse and the British matron, a marginal figure in the history of colonial medicine in Palestine.As Shula Marks (2007: 69) recognizes in her study on the colonial asylum, nurses were often brought to attention only "through acts of scandalous neglect or brutality."This was certainly the case of British nurses in Palestine, who often reappeared as anonymous characters emblematic of colonial domination. 1 This article brings British nurses to the forefront by exploring the Bethlehem incident as a focal point from which to uncover their lived experience and contested status.It exposes the interrelations of gender, class, race, and professionalism within the colonial medical sphere and society and brings into question colonial power relations and concepts of hegemony.The article argues that British nurses present a unique type of imperial agent, serving in a liminal space between hegemony and subservience.Acting as they did as formal representatives of empire and the colonial state, 2 and practicing a respectable profession, they exerted authority over indigenous populations and performed a crucial role in what they perceived as an imperial civilizing mission.Yet at the same time, given their gender and vocation, they were marginalized in various ways and within multiple hierarchies, experiencing many limitations to their personal and professional lives.
The present article locates nurses' history at the nexus of the trajectories of women's imperial agency, mobility, and work during the interwar years, offering an additional way to interpret them within the colonial context.Most studies of European women in the colonies focus on female settlers or "incorporated wives" of colonial officials and on the role of domesticity within the imperial framework (e.g., Procida 2002).On the other side of colonial white society, women are studied as "subaltern whites," mainly as prostitutes or in the context of miscegenation (Fischer-Tiné 2009; Levine 2003).Studies have also addressed emigration of single women from Britain (Chilton 2007; Hammerton 1979; Harper 2010).Relatively few studies have focused on the experiences of single, educated, and professional women, exploring single women's inclusion in missionary societies (Hunt 1990;  Ingram 2007; Prevost 2010) or the agency of British female doctors (Burton 1996;  Hassan 2011; Paul 1997).
The burgeoning literature on colonial nursing over the last decades has generated significant insights, examining the distribution of biomedical knowledge and practices through encounters with indigenous populations (Howell et al. 2013;  Nestel 1998; Rafferty 2005; Sweet and Hawkins, 2015).While existing scholarship untangles colonial nurses' interactions with ideologies and power, it has yet to yield a comprehensive account of their contested status in the medical arena and colonial society overall.Though some accounts address the limits to their professional authority and impact, nurses' status as respectable members of the ruling caste and expatriate community is often considered self-evident (Holden 1991).Furthermore, these accounts rarely address colonial territories beyond South and East Asia, Africa, and the Dominions.Focusing mainly either on the long nineteenth century or on periods of decolonization, the existing scholarship leaves colonial nursing in the Middle East and interwar Palestine altogether unexplored.Finally, most studies on nurses in Mandate Palestine have focused on Jewish nurses and their work within the independent Jewish health system (e.g., Bartal 2005; Hirsch 2008).Recent valuable contributions, however, have examined the experiences of Palestinian Arab nurses within the mandate's public health system, giving these women names, voices, and agency (Brownson 2017; Shatz 2018).This article aims at contributing to the historiography of nursing in Palestine by adding British nurses to the history of the profession's trajectories during the interwar years.By complicating British nurses' status within professional and social hierarchies, it also aims at dismantling the so far monolithic image of the cadre of British formal agents in Mandate Palestine.
The article is based on nurses' letters, the records of the Overseas Nursing Association (ONA), and official mandate publications and correspondence.The sources enabled me to create a database of 117 British nurses who served in Palestine throughout the mandate and provide a window onto their lives.While rich and varied, these sources are limited mostly to British perspectives and experiences, revealing only a glimpse into those of colonial subjects.Moving on a continuum between the individual tale and the collective, the Bethlehem incident serves as a case study illustrating nurses' experiences and status.These are outlined in expanding circles and hierarchies, from the confined sphere of the hospital to the general colonial administration and environment.The first section outlines the work and main characteristics of British nurses in the mandate administration.The second explores the symbolic and material practices that defined British nurses' professional and racial authority, whereas the third section examines their everyday work and position within an extended hierarchy of work relations in the medical sphere.By further extending these observations into the mandate administration and colonial society, the final section explores nurses' social status and its implications for daily life.

British Nurses in the Mandate Administration and Empire
The first British nurse, Emily Dickin, arrived in Palestine in September 1920.By the end of 1921 five more had joined her and the number of British nurses continued to increase, from ten in 1928 to twenty-seven in 1937 and forty-three in 1947. 3Their rapid deployment in Palestine was the result of expansion in government medical services, including the restoration and establishment of hospitals countrywide.British nurses assumed key roles in these projects, as they all initially filled the roles of matrons in the larger hospitals, in charge of the nursing staff and hospitals' preliminary organization.Gradually, they served as nursing sisters as well, caring for the sick in hospital wards and supervising local staff nurses.British nurses worked in four of the largest government general hospitals, in Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, and Nablus, and in five government specialized hospitals for mental health and infectious diseases, in Bethlehem, Safed, Bnei Brak, and Beit Safafa.Toward the end of 1926 they started filling the role of superintendents of midwifery, and by 1936 five were regularly appointed each year to train midwives, instruct local mothers, and develop infant welfare work in small towns and villages. 4he British nurses presented an anomaly within the British administration.A predominantly male establishment, the government employed a small group of British women (7-10 percent of British personnel) in nursing, education, or welfare as well as in secretarial and clerical positions.Nurses were the majority: from the early 1930s to the late 1940s they represented between 84 and 90 percent of British women employed in the government's Senior Division. 5The limited number and roles of British women were characteristic of the interwar Colonial Office, which limited the employment of women to particular branches.One of its senior officials wrote that while women in the administrative service could "not be expected to perform the ordinary duties effectually," imperial service in education and nursing was "work of incalculable importance which not only can be done by women, but cannot be done so well, if at all, by men" (Jeffries 1938: 236).
The circulation of British nurses in the empire (outside the auspice of missionary societies) became widespread by the 1920s through the ONA, an association established in 1896 by socially prominent British women, initially to send trained nurses to British expatriate communities.The liaison with the ONA demonstrates another singularity of British nurses within the mandate administration.Originally a self-funded charity, the ONA gradually became a recruitment agency for the Colonial Office, engaging thousands of nurses to work in the colonies. 6While nurses in Palestine were direct employees of the local government, it was the ONA that registered and administered them, maintained regular contact with them, pressed their claims, and cared for their welfare.The ONA offered these women varied working opportunities worldwide and, at the same time, excluded them from the mainstream male recruiting system as well as from the standard administrative association with the Colonial Office, which carried financial and privilege implications.Moreover, it was the ONA's recruiting process that had a crucial impact on the personal and professional characteristics of the nurses sent overseas.
The ONA committee interviewed Dora Louise Whitaker in February 1922.A single woman of thirty-nine, she had been trained at the Royal London Hospital, served in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, and had three years' experience at the Cane Hill Asylum in south London.Leaving a good impression as "adaptable, suitable for institution work, quiet in manner," 7 she was posted as matron at the Government Mental Hospital in Bethlehem.Like Whitaker, all British nurses in Palestine were trained in British hospitals, and many had wartime experience.All nurses held a certificate from the Central Midwives Board, and for some, Palestine was a second or even third imperial post: in 1947 ten of forty-four nurses had worked in other colonies. 8While their social background is difficult to trace, recruitment trends for nursing both in Britain and in the ONA attest that these nurses usually came from a middle-class background or the new skilled working class (Hawkins 2010; Rafferty 2005).
The great majority (111 of 117) were single; an examination of a cohort of sixty-nine women of known age reveals that on average they were thirty-two on arrival. 9These characteristics correlate with those of the woman deemed suitable for nursing in turn-of-the-century England: "one who had chosen nursing after 'mature reflection' and for whom marriage was of secondary importance" (Maggs   1980: 35).Targeting "spinsters" aged twenty-five to forty (Rafferty 2005: 7), the ONA's criteria were part of a well-established practice regarding women's work in both metropolitan and colonial officialdom: though restrictions regarding marriage in the Colonial Service had changed by the 1920s, they applied only to male agents, whereas professional women had to resign once married (Callaway 1987:  47).Moreover, recruiters expected prospective nurses, as representatives of empire and British femininity, to be respectable "ladies."The report on Jean Hadden, who arrived in Palestine in 1932, for example, described her as "capable, agreeable, and always well behaved." 10In fact, in the interviews undertaken by the ONA, appearance, manner, and "feminine talents" received more attention than nursing experience or medical skills (Birkett 1992: 178).
These women and their motivations should be considered within the context of female migration throughout the empire.Tens of thousands of women were driven overseas by economic opportunities; the promise of adventure, autonomy, and responsibility; ideological convictions; or the desire to escape the metropole's class and gender restrictions (Harper 2010).Colonial nursing, specifically, provided single women with a respectable professional pursuit and an official seal as representatives of Western biomedicine.Those who were employed as official agents of the local government, as was the case in Mandate Palestine, were able to achieve status and authority far beyond those available for them in their homeland.

Pride and Prejudice: The British Nurse's Authority
The main evidence on the Bethlehem incident is found in the correspondence among Whitaker, the ONA, mandate authorities, and the Colonial Office."It is with the greatest difficulty [that] I try to tell you what has happened to me," Whitaker commenced her first letter to the ONA's secretary, describing how an Arab nurse who had committed some fault, "had a violent attack of hysteria . . .and I thought she had gone out of her mind.I was obliged to resort to a jacket which is the only means of restraint we have here and put her in a room while I got the doctor." 11In a confidential letter by Director of the Department of Health Col. Heron to the Chief Secretary, he emphasized that the "room" in question is one of the isolation cells reserved for maniacal patients, and "is a last extremity only," requiring staff to inform the Senior Medical Officer (SMO) immediately. 12hitaker's confidence that her position allowed her to abuse a subordinate was the result of the hospital's working environment within its colonial framework.British matrons maintained their authority through firm discipline, a trait which medical authorities held in high regard and perceived as a professional asset. 13xerting authority and discipline over subordinate staff was part of the very definition of the matron's role.It had been a crucial element in hospital nursing reform in Britain since the late nineteenth century, establishing a sphere of authority for women in an occupational hierarchy (Wildman and Hewison 2009; Witz 1992).In the colonial environment, however, the British nurse's authoritative stance was not only professional but racial and cultural as well.In all Palestine's government hospitals, leadership was entrusted to British matrons, with all staff positions held by locals: whereas in several facilities matrons also oversaw a small cohort of British nursing sisters, the nurses they supervised were for the most part Arab women.Such was the case in the Bethlehem mental hospital during the 1920s, where the British matron oversaw an entirely Arab staff of female nurses and male orderlies. 14upervision of indigenous staff was a recognized feature of colonial service, and nurses often viewed it as an integral, even desired, attribute of their post.Edith Redmill, matron of the Haifa government hospital, wrote to the ONA in 1924 that it was common for British nursing sisters to be disappointed to find themselves "in a more or less subordinate position without sole control of the native staff." 15The need to enforce discipline and a hierarchical order within the hospital often arose, subjecting Arab nurses to far more subordination.In 1931 the SMO clarified to the matron of the Jerusalem government hospital that her "Palestinian staff must understand that British Nursing Sisters are their seniors in appointment and must behave towards them accordingly" (quoted in Fleischmann 2003: 56).
The mechanism of colonial rule embedded racial and cultural hierarchies, enabling a small cohort of foreign imperial representatives to exert power over large indigenous populations.The colonial state's premise of power was in fact the "rule of colonial difference, namely, the preservation of the alienness of the ruling group" (Chatterjee 1993: 10).The colonial hospital followed the same logic, as nurses established and maintained their authority through both physical and symbolic distinction.In a group photo (fig.1), commemorating graduate nurses at the end of their training program, a physical difference is evident in the group's positioning, with local nurses, either standing or sitting on mats laid on the ground, placed around the central row shared by British nurses and senior male medical officers and physicians, seated on chairs.A distinction in nurses' uniforms is also evident, local nurses wearing a colored dress with a sleeveless white robe and a short and stiff white head cover and British nurses wearing a long white dress with long sleeves and a long white kerchief.What in normal situations was the emblem of professional hierarchy was in the colonial context also a marker of racial disparity.Similar differentiation in nurses' uniforms is apparent in various colonies, as perpetuated in photograph albums held at the ONA archive. 16The nurses' uniform, as Howell (2013:  66) argues, aimed both to emphasize their decorum as female subjects and as professionals and to keep them separate from the physical and cultural environment.
Distance was evident in multiple aspects of everyday routines and relationships.In their letters nurses never identified subordinates or even colleagues by name but simply as "Arabs" or "natives," and there were no indications of personal contacts.Redmill confessed that in her working environment, however amicable the native staff may have been, "there is much loneliness." 17Explaining one of her reasons for resigning, Mable Harse, a nurse in the Jerusalem government hospital, wrote in 1928: "My duty and off duty hours are the same as the native nurses, and when on duty the only place where I can sit is at the native staff nurses table. . . .I find it impossible to work under these conditions." 18Harse's complaint indicates opposition to the blurring of racial boundaries while pointing to actual segregation within the hospital.This segregation also pertained to living arrangements: British and local nurses lived in separate quarters, which differed significantly in size and internal arrangement.In the staff quarters of the Safad government hospital, for instance, the British matron enjoyed an apartment with a bedroom, sitting room, dining room, and bathroom, whereas her subordinates, two staff nurses and six probationers, shared one apartment.Moreover, around the same sum of money was spent on the purchase of furnishings for the single matron's quarters as on those of eight women. 19acial distancing was deeply rooted in colonial nursing in general.The concept of a European nurse tending to the needs of indigenous patients, and vice versa, violated both sexual and racial taboos and was a central impetus in initiating training programs in the colonies (Marks 1994: 5-6; Schultheiss 2010: 152).Moreover, despite transformations in imperial rhetoric regarding medical development in the colonies following World War I, curative care for the colonizers remained a fundamental driving force behind colonial nurses' circulation and practice and continued to show a racially unequal distribution (Krik forthcoming).Preservation of racial boundaries prevailed in Palestine from the mandate's inception, as British patients were treated in government hospitals in separate rooms, with the exclusive care of British nurses.Formal segregated British sections were inaugurated in the Jerusalem government hospital in 1928 and the Haifa government hospital in 1938, presenting elevated conditions and a predominantly British medical staff. 20edical knowledge and practice were further employed to construct physical and symbolic differences between colonizers and colonized.The belief in both the benefits and supremacy of Western biomedicine and British nursing principles was manifested in the everyday work of the nurses and their attitudes toward local medicine, hygiene, and practices.More than any other medical field, mental illness revealed differences in approaches and perceptions of diseases.In her role as the first matron of the Bethlehem mental hospital, Frances Isabella Channell described how "the insane here are of course as you know looked upon as being in possession of devils etc.This we want to remove from their minds but will take a long time I fear."The profound gap between local and British understandings of mental disease was embodied even within the hospital's staff: "Last week one of my nurses declined to help with a patient during her excitement.The reason given was-I can't touch her now, she has a Devil in her." 21 Mental health and psychiatry in the colonial context, as Megan Vaughan (1983), Sloan Mahone (2007), and others have demonstrated, helped perpetuate a dichotomy between reason and madness, highlighting the "irrationality" of the native mind, and serving to legitimize colonial racism.Note Whitaker's diagnosis of the Arab nurse's behavior as "hysteria," a condition that colonial psychiatrists redefined since the early twentieth century as frequent among "Oriental races."Colonial medicine further accepted hysterical reactions particularly as part of the personality and behavior of Muslim women (Studer 2016; see also Parle 2003).
The main conduit for implementing British medical practices and knowledge was the training of local nurses and midwives.A systematic training began in Palestine's government hospitals from early 1920, in which British matrons played a central role by giving lectures and formulating syllabuses and examinations.The Principles and Practice of Nursing was a fixed course for third-year nurses and was regularly conducted by a senior British matron. 22Instruction was provided along the customary curriculum in Britain and through classic British textbooks on nursing.One of these, Elementary Hygiene for Nurses, by H. C. R. Darling, was widely circulated in Britain and the empire for decades, considered "a useful textbook for the nurse in training where a knowledge and understanding of the elementary principles of hygiene are a necessity" (South African Medical Journal 1952: 1019).In 1947 the Department of Health purchased 150 copies of the book, to be loaned to all student nurses in the government's training hospitals. 23ygiene and postnatal and infant care were dominant features in the general training of nurses and regularly dominated examinations' questionnaires, particularly on issues of feeding and bottle cleaning. 24Much as in the case of mental health, attitudes toward local midwifery and maternal practices were saturated with claims of local superstitions and ignorance.Nurses' main task was to transform traditional practices, as was particularly evident in the role of superintendents of midwifery.One superintendent defined her role as helping the poor by "teaching them gradually to do away with harmful quackery and charm treatment and rid themselves of the prejudices against trained attendance and hospital" (quoted in Brownson 2017:  30).As Brownson (2017) argues, superintendents in Palestine were the government's main vehicle for institutionalizing health care and controlling the local, particularly female, population.In her position as superintendent in Hebron, Dickin was in charge of developing midwifery techniques in the surrounding villages, professing in 1937 that "as yet, the women are . . .very averse to changing their barbaric ways.However, I must teach them. . . .I hope they will all . . .at least be able to grasp the rudimentary principles of cleanliness." 25Hygiene, as numerous studies have demonstrated (e.g., Hirsch 2008; Howell et al. 2013; Nestel 1998), served as a crucial tool for confirming the superiority of Western medicine and culture and was further used to create boundaries between the nurses and their setting.The focus on hygiene was also pragmatic and tactical, used by the nurses to claim authority and a separate sphere of expertise within the medical arena (Poovey 1988: 186).
In this stance, British nurses were not simply emissaries of medical knowledge but perceived themselves as disseminating the fundamental principles of civilization.The ONA carefully nurtured this image.In 1940 its Annual Report maintained that in nurses' work with the sick, the mothers and children, and the nurses whom they train, they "are serving their country and the cause of civilization." 26ritish nurses and the ONA, in general, adopted imperial feminism's ideology by placing women and mothers at the center of the civilizing trope and racial supremacy (Burton 1994).Their vocabulary, nevertheless, was far from the notions of "salvation," "emancipation," or the "heathen sisters" often employed by imperial feminists.Set within the colonial sphere on a professional mission for which they were trained, their letters indicate more apathy than compassion and focus merely on medical and hygienic objects of change.
Even if good intentions were indeed part of nurses' motivations, their efforts should be considered within the general context of colonial domination.As pro-fessionals and formal agents of the colonial state, they were assimilated into the imperial ruling group and culture of power, reinforcing mastery as well as maintaining distance between them and their subjects of change.These attitudes and practices, being deeply rooted in their everyday lives and work, serve as an explanation to Whitaker's drastic measures and implied sense of impunity.As powerful and dominant matrons' position was, however, it would be misleading to portray them as almighty: their everyday work was often strenuous, and their authority did not go unchallenged.

Colonial Nursing in Practice and Authority in Question
In her letter to the ONA secretary, Whitaker described at length the circumstances prevailing in the hospital in the weeks preceding the incident.Returning from home leave in June, she found the hospital in a bad state: certain recommendations she had made to the SMO were ignored; a senior male attendant she had dismissedfor cruelty to patients and open defiance of her -was reinstated; staff changes were made without consulting with her; and on her return she was told that the female section had to be increased by ten beds.As the nursing staff already suffered severe shortage, the nurses were all overstrained and needing leave and one after the other reported sick. . . .The new cases who had come in were very bad and the doctor not being experienced did not deal with them as he might have. . . .At last when another case was to come I phoned the SMO and said it was impossible at present.He merely said if I couldn't manage he should withdraw the two extra nurses. 27itaker describes conditions typical of mental health facilities in Palestine throughout the mandate period.Until 1932 the Bethlehem hospital was the only government mental facility in the country.Both this and a Jewish voluntary mental hospital in Jerusalem had poor hygienic conditions, security devices, and general infrastructure and were regularly overcrowded (Simoni 1999).These circumstances affected the nature of the cases admitted, reduced to patients too extreme or dangerous to be cared for at home. 28Whitaker describes further related difficulties: personnel shortage, high turnover, and inexperienced staff and physicians.With the physician in charge visiting only twice a day, she faced these difficulties entirely alone.The burden was recognized by the medical authorities, with Col. Heron testifying that "I am of opinion that there are few women capable of taking charge single handed of such an institution, where there is no resident doctor, no European male superintendent, and an entirely Palestinian staff even including the Doctor in medical charge." 29hortage of trained nurses and overcrowdedness were also typical of government general hospitals. 30Besides being simply overtaxing, these everyday circumstances forced nurses to focus on basic practical work, leading them to be frustrated in the exercise of their skills.In her request to be transferred to Barbados in 1934, Jean Hadden expressed disappointment with her service: "We are appointed as nursing sisters . . ., but here we are doing the work of private nurses and sometimes nursing probationers." 31Jessie Green wrote in 1934 on a transfer request, "I feel I have taken a step backwards instead of forwards." 32Harse similarly remarked in 1926: "I have worked a very long time now in the colonial service, and am only doing work which I did before I left my training school." 33For at least some, the motivation to pursue a career overseas entailed professional engagement and the aspiration for significant career development.Thus the imperative to take on mostly practical work and the constant overload were causes for disappointment, a recurrent theme in nurses' letters.
Nurses' limited scope of authority also concerned their position within the medical administration.While holding senior positions in the hospital, British matrons were directly subordinate to the hospital's (Palestinian) physicians, a (Palestinian) junior health officer, a (British) senior medical officer, and, at the top, the director of the Department of Health.Nursing sisters were subordinate to matrons, and at the very bottom were local nurses and orderlies.This structure meant that nurses operated in a highly centralized and hierarchical system, typical of all government departments throughout the mandate, requiring them to obtain approval from supervisors on even minor issues.Moreover, as they often complained in their letters, their attempts to offer recommendations or object to high-level decisions were often ignored and even scorned."I am venturing to ask, what a British matron can do in the following circumstances," wrote an unidentified matron in the Jerusalem government hospital in 1926, describing an unsatisfactory change in her hospital's staff.Not only did her supervisors ignore her protest, but subsequent instructions undermining her authority were made in front of the entire staff: "I look upon it as a professional insult to our positions as British matrons. . . .I enquired the reason . . .and was told it was not my business to ask.I then asked to see the assistant Director or Director.Both refused to see me, and the message refusing came in writing, passing office and clerks." 34articularly evident in Whitaker's chronicles, such situations suggest that while British matrons exerted some authority within the hospital and over most of its staff, they remained subservient to male medical authority and did not have independent control over the hospital's affairs.This correlates with global developments during the first half of the century: while women began expanding beyond a defined set of feminine roles, hospitals remained highly gendered spaces with rigid stratification (Wildman and Hewison 2009).As many nurses left Britain for the imperial outpost, precisely because they wished to break out of these confines, gaps between their expectations and on-the-ground practice widened.Moreover, as ONA's numerous documents reveal, the association functioned as an intermediary between the nurses and senior mandate officials, indicating high levels of distance between these two groups of local-level agents.
In the colonial sphere, however, this professional hierarchy had further implications.Subordinating a British civil servant to an indigenous one was highly unusual, and British nurses' position is one of the rare examples of such racial reversal of power, particularly as they were qualified professionals.It was both their gender and their vocation that enabled their subordination, as British male doctors could never be subordinate to an indigenous doctor, even if the latter was more experienced (Bell 1999: 41).British nurses subordinated to indigenous physicians was a rare feature in colonial medical services throughout the empire, and similar instances can be found mostly in Crown colonies such as Cyprus (Krik forthcoming) and Ceylon (Jones 2004).Mandate Palestine, as Kozma and Furas (2020) demonstrate, witnessed the expansion of a community of professionally trained Arab doctors, many of whom were employed as health officers in the Department of Health.British nurses-particularly those with previous experience in Africa's colonies, where European nurses complemented the work of European doctors (Birkett  1992: 185), and Europeans were given priority in the public sector (Masakure  2015: 118)-certainly did not anticipate this kind of positioning.On the contrary, particulars for a hospital matron in Palestine explicitly stated that while there are native doctors, the matron "is directly under a British medical officer." 35he complexities of these unique colonial hierarchies became evident in nurses' letters mainly when confrontations emerged.Redmill informed the ONA in April 1929 that she was to leave her post before the termination of her contract owing to difficulties with her "local chief."Despite Col. Heron's appreciation of her service, Redmill's contract was immediately terminated. 36Similarly, the person responsible for Whitaker's immediate removal from the hospital following the incident was her Arab supervisor, Dr. Mikhaʾil Maʿaluf.According to her testimony, he "went off the deep end completely and abused me frightfully.It was dreadful." 37ecently appointed to the hospital, Whitaker described Maʿaluf as inexperienced and dysfunctional; indeed, he lacked experience in mental health.The tension between them may well have been a product of both professionals in their claim for power within the hospital's hierarchy, yet it also indicates power relations that reversed the colonial order of things.
Subordinated to indigenous doctors and supervisors, the British nurse's racial and cultural authority was far from immune, highlighting the complicated relationships formed within the colonial hospital.Frantz Fanon (1965) depicted the (male) doctor-patient encounter within the colonial clinic as a tool of oppression but also as a tool of liberation by the colonized,whose patterns of conduct implicitly express rejection.Other accounts (such as Fanon [1952] 2008 or Stoler 1995) describe the colonized male's sexual desire for white women as a tool of domination.Here, though, we can see a particular gender-based encounter, in which racial authority collided with the professional one.The presence of a British woman in the hospital allowed the indigenous subject, a senior male physician, to assert dominance over a colonizer and express a level of resistance that could never have been possible against a male representative of the Crown.
Conflicts between British nurses and their subordinate staff were also not a rare occurrence.In 1931 Dickin explained that as the Jerusalem government hospital was a training school that functioned with Palestinian staff nurses, "in the past, there has been some friction arising from this, and it is this which makes Palestine a difficult place for some sisters." 38Nursing sister Kathleen Grice was confidentially reported in 1939 as having great difficulties handling her subordinate staff. 39Another illuminating instance was the Department of Health's rejection of Whitaker's reassignment to her post following her exoneration-due to the nursing staff 's refusal to serve under her. 40Moreover, while Whitaker's professional qualities were considered excellent, senior officials and the Colonial Office opposed her reemployment, "owing to her inability to maintain amicable relations with her Palestinian subordinates." 41Col. Heron considered the significance of local responses to the incident: The general Palestinian nursing service of the department during eight years has been built up not without considerable difficulties. . . .The incident at Bethlehem mental hospital is known throughout the hospitals of the country and has already severely shaken the confidence of Palestinian nurses of the service. . . .The treatment of the nurse in Bethlehem therefore cannot be condoned, if we wish in the future to obtain recruits for our nursing service from respectable families. 42 Col. Heron indicates, authorities had to treat Whitaker severely, more for demonstrative reasons than out of moral considerations.His words point to yet another potential cause of friction within colonial hospitals, in which local nurses often came from a higher socioeconomic status than did their British counterparts.The government's main cadre of Palestinian nurses were missionary-educated Christian women, who often came from upper-and middle-class families.Gradually upperclass Muslim women began to enter the profession as well (Greenberg 2010).As British nurses came from working and middle-class backgrounds, class tensions may have also played a role in hospitals' tangled power relations, though were completely silenced in their letters.
Subsequent events were even harsher for Whitaker."I have simply been turned out of my job like a dog," she desperately claimed, describing how she was removed from the hospital's premises, unable to return for her few belongings and clothes, and given no opportunity to defend herself.Unable to get advice from anyone, she consulted a lawyer at her own expense.She received no compensation on termination of her contract, and her duty allowances stopped. 43In one of her final statements on record she claims: "One can hardly believe that it is British administration, there is no justice in it." 44Whitaker's statement reflects her subjective interpretation of the situation and understanding of her status and its limits.As ironic as this statement may seem in a postcolonial era, in a contemporary colonial climate these events were indeed remarkable, and a male British physician or official was most unlikely to be treated the same way.The incident's outcome was very surprising indeed for Whitaker and her colleagues, who made their claims on her behalf to the ONA's committee.Trained to believe in the absolute power and privilege of being British in a colonial territory, they soon realized that being British was not enough: it entailed privileges but also certain duties and restrictions, more so for single and professional women.
Female, Single, and Professional: Women in British Administration and Society Although single and professional women became an integral part of the imperial project from the late nineteenth century, the institutional attitude toward them remained ambivalent up until the 1950s.Being single, they challenged traditional perceptions of women's reproductive roles; as professionals, though usually in "feminine" roles, they undermined perceptions of women's work.Unlike married women in the colonies, whose status derived from their husbands' , single and professional women derived both their status and identity from their occupation, a privilege reserved exclusively for men.They were thus often perceived as "less than women," even as failures, and remained unincorporated into the masculine world of the colonial service (Callaway 1987: 14, 47-48).
These attitudes had various material and social manifestations.First, notions of the dependent female dictated low wages and jobs availability for single women only (Haggis 1990: 106).British women were indeed at the bottom of the salary scale in the mandate administration: during the 1930s, no British man in the Senior Division earned less than 300 Palestinian pounds (PP) annually, while all women received less, with the lowest salary being that of nurses, between 150 and 170 PP.Moreover, British nurses were paid the lowest salary among all officials in the Senior Division, locals included. 45This was highly exceptional, as British civil servants' salaries were deliberately higher than those of local employees throughout the mandate (Reuveni 1993: 92-93).Administrative grades also manifested discrimination.British women employed in the Department of Health did not have grades at all attached to their posts, while those employed in the Department of Education and Secretariat held lower grades relative to their positions.These conditions were the result of a formal policy determined in the late 1920s to limit the promotion of women (100).The implications went beyond economic ones.As these data were reported annually in government publications, officials' professional and economic status was known to all, forming a central component in the social hierarchy created within the British community (Krik 2021: 232-33).
Nurses' inferior status can be traced in their living arrangements as well, as evident through the thick file laden with correspondence concerning faults in British nurses' quarters in Jerusalem.In 1928, for example, the nurses' house had no potable water, no electric lights installed, and the latrines in the backyard were out of order.Problems continued, and nurses' recurrent complaints met a slow official response. 46Difficulties continued into the 1940s despite moving to different quarters.Because of the state of the kitchen and its stove, wrote the matron, they cooked their food in the hospital and carried it through the streets to reheat it at home: "Naturally under these conditions the sisters are frequently getting gastric troubles." 47Despite having upgraded quarters compared to local nurses, the conditions described were far below the standard of the homes for British senior officials and their families.Imperial agents' domestic sphere had to epitomize respectability, progress, and modernity, as much as it played a key role in creating physical and symbolic divisions between colonizers and colonized.One way to meet this demand was through a government committee, which was responsible for leasing and managing British officials' accommodation in keeping with the highest possible standards (Krik 2018).
Colonial nursing in Palestine did not pass without some social advantages, however.Nurses' quarters were provided with one or two servants, a benefit that by the interwar years had become rare for middle-class families in Britain.Nurses could also participate in some social activities of the British community, such as playing tennis in sports clubs that performed as the community's central social institutions (Krik 2018).The hope to improve socioeconomic standing was certainly a motivation to pursue an imperial career and was common to most imperial agents, male and female alike.Furthermore, the colonial environment held vast opportunities for more diverse social interactions as well as romantic encounters.Opportunities for marriage were greater in the colonies due to the gender imbalance within the British populace, and of seventy-three nurses whose reason for termination of service in Palestine is known, nineteen (26 percent) resigned to be married. 48Since short home leaves made it difficult for these women to establish longterm relationships in Britain, many had found their spouses in Palestine, mainly in the British army and police services. 49ritish nurses' status had much to do with the entanglement of sexuality, gender, and race, which have traditionally been a central component of imperial attitudes toward white women's presence in the colonies.Yet while married women had the crucial role of maintaining the colonial community's morality and respectability, single women were the target of anxieties and suspicions.Nurses were charged with even stricter demands: they were expected to meet stringent standards of behavior and lifestyle, and their everyday life required tight supervision.As protectors of their countrymen's bodies and minds, and as the supposed epitome of morality and discipline by their indigenous staff and patients, they had to be "healthy," self-controlled, and restrained.European nurses in Africa, as Birkett  (1992) argues, were desexualized and had to distance themselves from the surrounding lascivious landscape.One device of regulation was their living arrangements, in the form of quarters shared by several nurses in a strictly feminine environment.This practice allowed single women to maintain their respectability and created an alternative to the absence of a nuclear family-a women sisterhood (Vicinus 1985).
In these surrogate families, internal supervision was fundamental, and the matron held responsibility not only as a professional supervisor but also as the symbolic head of the family.In the annual confidential reports on British nurses, matrons provided information on nursing sisters, occasionally addressing issues of character and conduct.The 1937 report on Winifred Wilson, a nursing sister in Jerusalem, was nothing but praise: she was described as capable and efficient, her efforts much appreciated by both patients and staff.The 1938 report, however, stated that she had "lacked a sense of responsibility for some time, being much more interested in her social activities," and recommended her transfer from Jerusalem "for her own good, as well as that of the hospital." 50Matrons' role in monitoring nurses' social and moral behavior is evident in Dickin's request to the ONA's secretary, in 1928, to "send a good conscientious worker, not one who only wants pleasure." 51In 1931 she stressed that she had "much unpleasantness to deal with owing to some unsuitable or unadaptable women."She asserted once again that "to the right type of woman, Palestine can be a charming place . . .but of course happiness depends on the woman herself, and if duty is her first thought-self and pleasure afterwards -then she will be happy." 52n addition to the display of feminine respectability, nurses were charged with qualities perceived as intrinsic to the profession.The most typical qualities appearing in confidential reports were "capable," "cheerful," "energetic," "reliable," and "conscientious."Elizabeth Hewetson, for example, was described as "a quiet and efficient worker, with a temperament well suited for her profession.Pleasant and keenly in her nursing." 53Deviations from the norm were described in negative terms: Olive Collard had a "very cheerful personality" but was also "rather flippant"; Irene Cowan was described as capable but "somewhat temperamental and inclined to be upset by tingles"; and Elsie O'Rourke was described as possessing "quick temper and is insubordinate at times." 54Colonial nurses had to adjust to the image carved since the nursing profession had been established as a respectable feminine pursuitthat of the "white angel," a symbol of purity, compassion, and self-sacrifice (Hallam  2012).Matrons' supervision over (and evaluation of ) both the work and lives of British nursing sisters suggests a hierarchy created within the cadre of British nurses in which power relations went beyond the professional level.It also reflects how the nurses themselves implemented and projected aspects promoted by the ONA-such as self-discipline and quasi-religious dedication to duty.
Professional women in the colonies were liable to challenge gendered boundaries in their everyday practices as well.Colonial nurses especially, as Howell (2013:  64) argues, "occupied a liminal space between traditionally masculine and feminine duties, public and private spheres, home and away."This was particularly evident in the work of the superintendents of midwifery, which took them away from the controlled hospital space.Dickin described herself as moving around villages in the Hebron district, inspecting midwives: a movement that was far from conventional for a British woman in the colonial sphere.An article of January 31, 1938, in the Palestine Post described the first female welfare inspector, Hilda Ridler, as "a romantic figure . . .a young Englishwoman, riding a horse to remote Arab villages and towns, carrying the symbol of a new world to a neglected female population."Ridler's representation epitomized her as carrying out "feminine" work through everyday practices that were to a large extent "masculine."Winifred Rogers, superintendent in Jerusalem, was awarded an MBE in 1938 for her heroism: in the midst of the Arab Revolt she entered a rebel area, where soldiers had not penetrated, to reach a welfare center.She was praised as the "Englishwoman who defied the street snipers." 55efying in her action conservative gender norms as well, Rogers was captured in a photograph in a newspaper article (fig.2) mounted on a horse, sitting erect with a straightforward gaze to the camera, wearing high leather boots and a bright dress suit.As impressive and confident as she may seem, her appearance was farther away from the traditional image of the feminine, gentle, and white-starched nurse.
It is not coincidental that the women allowed to cross gender boundaries were the more senior nurses, often women in their forties.First, unlike young single women, the chances for a mature woman to marry were perceived to be poorher life and work therefore no longer involved neglect of her "natural" role.Second, they had many years' experience and devoted their lives to their work.Outstanding and mature professional women with a good reputation and significant contribution could command respect, subordinating, as it were, their gender to their professional identity.Thus Rogers, aged forty-three, could be "safely" considered a "heroine," and her risky behavior accepted as courageous.The relation between status and spinsterhood, however, was reserved for the few.The high rate of resignations among British nurses prevented most from enjoying the more elevated privileges of seniority: 65 percent left Palestine before or at the end of their first three years' service. 56Most British nurses remained in the lower ranks of the social order, maintaining only a certain degree of social respectability as formal agents of colonial rule.If the latter role was abolished, and marriage was not an option, the few who chose not to return to their homeland were forced into further obscurity, removed from respectable society to the inferior colonial status of "domiciled Europeans" or "poor whites."Following her dismissal, Whitaker remained in Jerusalem, casually employed in nursing and massaging and living in a small rented room.She had no property or income and was not eligible for any government allowances, as she did not complete her service.In August 1937 Whitaker experienced a mental breakdown, had to be restrained, and was conveyed by ambulance to the ʿAsfuriyyah Mental Hospital in Lebanon, escorted by two British nurses.In her last letter to her brothers in England, Whitaker announced that the Lord had entrusted her with an important mission. 57Diagnosed with "acute delusional insanity," she was treated in Lebanon for twenty months, until her condition improved.She sailed to England in March 1939 to be transferred to her brothers' custody. 58he irony of Whitaker's fate is obvious, but the circumstances that accompany this tale are illuminating.While mental fault may have been Whitaker's given condition all along, her secluded life took a heavy toll, and, living in abject poverty and loneliness, she gradually lost her mind.Whereas the Palestine government decided that Whitaker's condition was not "the result of her previous government employment," it bore the expenses involved until she was able to travel to England.The high commissioner considered it "an act of grace only and because (a) being a private resident in Palestine, the Government has no suitable accommodation in its own mental hospitals for an English woman such as Miss Whitaker; (b) she is without means; and (c) she was at one time-eleven years ago-in the employment of this government as a matron." 59Representatives of colonial rule who lost their sanity were not only a financial burden but also compromised the image of power and prestige, an anxiety resulting in Whitaker's confidential removal to a neighboring territory.Whitaker's case is even more dramatic because admitting her as a patient to the hospital she had managed was nothing less than absurd.Whitaker's colonial experience in Palestine ended in a fall from grace made more tragic by the gap between her delusions of divine grandeur and the wretchedness of her reality.

Conclusion
Postcolonial critics may question the extremeness of the Bethlehem incident, arguing that a refined and mundane form of violence has always been latent in colonial rule.Featuring in the everyday lives of British nurses, it was bound to surface in this way or another, incorporating women into the tale of aggressive masculine imperialism.This article nevertheless has sought to spotlight this individual story within the broader context of the intricacies of power, attempting to interpret British nurses as neither villains nor victims, depicting them as much as possible as fully fleshedout figures with a complicated existence in the colonial setting.
Primarily, British nurses served as official emissaries of the colonial state and an integral component of its mechanism.They were agents of biopower, actively contributing to maintaining imperial hegemony and the colonial racial order.At the same time, they experienced limited access to medical and administrative power and authority.Their contested position in the medical setting projected onto the broader colonial administration and colonial society, being both incorporated in and excluded from it, subjected to social restrictions and regulations.Embedding multiple ambiguities and contradictions, they did not fit smoothly into the colonial racial, gender, and class hierarchy.Examined in the context of female imperial agency, nurses' experiences testify to the enduring difficulties rooted in the inclusion of women in the colonial endeavor and in what, even during the interwar years, remained largely "the white man's burden."Hegemony and subordination are indeed tangled elements in their tale; as British nurses navigated between these edges, their identities, attitudes, and actions might be interpreted as their own claim for power.
Much like the exceptional individual story threaded throughout these pages, the history of British nurses in Palestine represents only one aspect of colonial rule and society.It nonetheless captures various facets of the colonial situation extending beyond the confines of the hospital or the nursing profession.Exposing the limits of colonial power as embedded in the experiences of local-level imperial agents, at the same time it flashes the possibilities for the colonized to exert their own power.Seeking to deconstruct the monolithic image of British agency in Palestine, invariably depicted as a hegemonic, male endeavor, this article offers novel insights into the mechanism of mandate rule in Palestine and further reveals the inner hierarchies and tensions within it.Even the seemingly distinct group of British nurses presents stratification, diversity in experiences and levels of authority, and occasional conflicts.Their history thus contributes to the ongoing research on colonialism by demonstrating the unstable, incoherent identities of both the colonizers and the colonized, allowing for a polyphony constructed around a matrix of gender, race, and class.
HAGIT KRIK is a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a participant in the European Research Council project "Regional History of Medicine in the Middle East."She is also a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology and the Oxford Centre for Global History.Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of local-level imperial agents during the interwar years.Contact: hagit.krik@mail.huji.ac.il.

1.
The incident was only briefly mentioned in research (Greenberg 2010: 181; Simoni 1999: 94-95), as illustrative of the low status of Palestinian nurses or the difficulties of the Bethlehem hospital.The authority of British nurses is also considered in research on local Arab nurses (Brownson 2017; Shatz 2018).

2.
Although Palestine was formally a mandate territory, it was administrated much like a British colony, its governance performed through the regular mechanism of a colonial state.