The Tarran Collection

 

This is a small collection of items relating to the professional life of local Nurse Marjorie Tarran SRN SCM OpthalmicCert RCNT. The collection includes:

- items of uniform from the mid 20th Century

- various books and pamphlets

- a painting

- hospital badges

- various ephemera including nursing certificates, exam papers, hospital fliers and pamplets, letters, and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings kept over many years by Nurse Tarran of her nursing staff to record key events in their lives.

 

Nurse Tarran was born in 1922 on a farm in Broughton Hackett, Worcestershire, and was the youngest of nine children. She began her nursing career in the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital in 1938 at the age of 16, and endured several years of difficulties during WW2 when patients often needed evacuating, electricity frequently failed, and food was in short supply. Nurse Tarran returned to Worcester to start her General Training, which she completed in 1944, and continued her involvement in the local war effort working at the historic infirmary at Castle Street and whilst conveys of soldiers were transported from Shrub Hill station to the purpose-built hospital at Ronkswood. Nurse Tarran went on to work in theatres, where she was appointed Staff Nurse, and then midwifery in Birmingham and Gloucester. Nurse Tarran became a clinical tutor in the 1960s, continuing in this role for many years, and as such holds a place in the hearts of many local nurses who were trained by her and who remember her fondly.

 

Nurse Tarran played an active part in the local community throughout her life, and was member of several local societies and groups including the Spetchley and District Garden Societym the Whist Club, Farm Women's Club, NHS Retirement Fellowship, Ronkswood Hospital Buffet, and of course the WRI Nurses League (and was president of the latter for sixteen years!).

 

Our very own Mr. George Marshall wrote of Nurse Tarran in a reference that she, 'had proved herself to be an excellent theatre sister who had good experience in the running of operating theatres under considerable difficulties [and had the] capability of getting good work from her junior nurses and of teaching them'.

 

Nurse Tarran died in 2008 and the items in her collection were donated to the Museum on behalf of Nurse Tarran by Mrs. Muriel Clayson and Mrs. Miriam Harvey.