Sarah Gamp
Sarah or Sairey Gamp is a nurse in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, first published as a serial in 1843–1844.
Mrs. Gamp, as she is usually referred to, is dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk. She became a notorious stereotype of untrained and incompetent nurses of the early Victorian era, before the reforms of campaigners like Florence Nightingale.
The caricature was popular with the British public. A type of umbrella became known as a gamp because Mrs. Gamp always carries one, which she displays with "particular ostentation".
The character was based upon a real nurse described to Dickens by his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts.[1][2]
Adaptions and other works
Mrs. Gamp appears in Dickensian, at first nursing Little Nell at the Old Curiosity Shop and later tending to Silas Wegg (from Our Mutual Friend).
References
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