A new exhibition at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) shows how the way we care for older people has changed over the last 200 years, shifting from workhouses, institutions and care homes and into the 21st century.
Aspects of Age starts with the problematic history of admitting older people into workhouses, through to changes in hospital care in the mid-20th century and into the more enlightened care we see today, where more people are looked after in their own homes.
Exhibits include original RCN pamphlets on how to care for older people and set up a nursing home, an enamel bedpan and cup from 1914 on loan from the British Red Cross Museum and Archive, and a 1912 ‘certificate of character’ for a workhouse nurse. Loaned by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society museum are late 18th century specimens of ‘sea skink’ – small lizards believed to have aphrodisiac properties and reported to ‘restore warmth in old age and decays of nature’.