Nurse, air hostess: Common history

The early history of air hostesses, also called cabin crew, flight attendants or stewardesses, is also the history of nursing. 

The concept of air hostess initially started in the United States in 1930. On May 15 of that year, a 25-year-old nurse, called Ellen Church, who was also a pilot, and seven other ladies became the first female flight attendants on a Boeing Air Transport Flight.

Ellen Church argued that nurses on aircraft would calm people's fear of flying.

Church and her airline, Boeing Air, worked out a scheme where nurses were hired for three months at a time to travel on board the airline, look after the passengers and quell their fears of flying. 

However, nursing as a profession gained recognition in the 19th Century due to the work of a lady statistician, politician, writer and teacher called Florence Nightingale.

She was also the inventor of the Pie Chart in statistical analysis. 

Nightingale was involved in the Crimean War (a major 19th-century conflict between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire from October 1853 to February 1856).

During that war, she helped to nurse the wounded soldiers. In the end, her work during this war reduced the fatality rates by 75 per cent and solidified her reputation as the mother of modern nursing.

Nightingale's emphasis on cleanliness, hygiene and patient care led to new standards in nursing.

As medical knowledge grew, nurses began to take on more complex roles, including administering medications, performing procedures and managing patient care.

The 20th Century saw the rise of specialised nursing roles, such as nurse-midwives, paediatric and critical care nursing.

So, the first official air hostesses were professional nurses, to begin with.

The nurses, Ellen Church and Florence Nightingale, the pioneers of air hostess and nursing, respectively, had something in common.

They were both nurses. 

The link between nursing and air hostesses was brought about by the special innate qualities of females as caregivers.

While Ellen Church established the necessity to use female nurses to comfort airline passengers, Florence Nightingale took nursing, the comfort and curative magic of the female touch, to the realms of health and healing.

No doubt, many people expect nurses and air hostesses to be ladies and not gentlemen. 

References: Google.com/professional recollections of both writers.

The writers are piloting and nursing professionals, repectively.