Nicci wrote: MJKB- Matrons with nursing qualifications are a dying breed these days, but in CS times she would almost certainly have trained.
ETA. - I can also agree with a previous post about the position of matrons being very much unquantified, but generally treated as lower status members of staff than the teachers (particularly galling if you have more qualifications than them!)
Where I worked as a matron, the boarding house matrons were a mixed bunch in terms of qualifications. We had a range, from post-grad to no academic qualifications, from those who had lots of experience working wih children and young people (in a range of capacitites) to those who had no previous experience of any kind.
It was interesting, though, that appointment of matrons was very much down to the individual Housemaster. So a 'tradionally minded' man (educated within the system, going to Univ, getting a job back within the safety of an all-male boarding school environment (and don't get me started on that!!!)) would probably (and did!) favour a matron who wouldn't threaten his position. So you might get a matron who was like a 'grandmother' to the boys. Someone with little formal education, older, likely to retire within a few years.
A younger man might employ a matron who was proactive and dynamic and fully- involved within the house, being unthreatened by her popularity and the fact that she had innovative ideas to add.
The school brought in a change to matrons' contracts which meant that when there was a change of Housemaster (every 10-12 years), the new Housemaster could employ a new matron. So your contract was automatically ended at the change of Housemaster. If you started when he had a few years to run you were OK, but if you started towards the end of his time, your job was at risk.
The San employed a Sister and a couple of nurses, all of whom were qualified, plus some HCAs. This created a difficulty for me when I frist arrived because I am a qualified nurse and midwife, I have a Diploma in Tropical Diseases, many years experience working as a Senior Staff Nurse on a paediatric ward in a large London hospital, and had wokrd in India as a nurse for just over a year. The San Sister dressed in a purple uniform and was appropriately nick-named by the boys. She was a rather fearsome woman who expected, and got, complete silence in the waiting room when the boys whent to the morning surgery. She had, of course, the final say when it came to how to handle various problems, and several times I inadvertently over-stepped my mark by taking things into my own hands. For example, I once took a boy straight to A&E following a sporting injury, without sending him to the San first. I did it without thinking - he would be sent there anyway, and it simply did not occur to me to let the San see him first. I learnt my mistake in uncertain terms!!!!
So the San-matron relationship seemed to work better if matrons were less educated/without any knowledge of physical health, leaving the San to do this.
Thinking about this, it highlights the whole ethos of the school - posistions and people were 'set in stone', and the stone was carved when the school started hundreds of years ago. Thus, everyone had their job and there was no chance to do it differently.
Of course, younger members of staff (teachers) who had been out in the wild world thought nothing of a mere matron having thoughts and ideas, but many, who were entrenched within the system and felt safe as long as nothing changed, did not like other staff, such as matrons, being innovative.
Nicci wrote: It can be an incredibly lonely life, particularly if you are single (which would have been the absolute norm back then). I doubt if Matey had to work through her holidays but this would be her only home so she would be around in the school holidays more than many of the academic staff.
The loneliness was hard. Matrons had flats situated on the second floor of the boarding house,, opening onto the stair-well. While the Hosuemasters were married and had a duplex within the Boarding house, they could, and did, shut their doors at times and were able to have a degree of 'personal' time that was denied the matron. (although it was still a very challenging job for Housemasters with families). Having to be available 24 hours a day (3 hours off a day, but still had to be getatable), six days a week (a clear 24 hours off in each seven-day period) left extremely little time for any personal life during term-time. The school was the size of village (about 2500 people in all), so you had to make your life within that environment. I found it very claustrophobic. When the boys were there, the matron had to be in-house, so one's only companionship was the boys themselves. This partly accounts for the particular closeness of some relationships.
During term-time the job was all-absorbing and -consuming. There was little time for personal life and 'normality'. And because matrons were expected by so many simply to be 'a mother', 'an aunt', or even 'a grandmother', they were not seen as real people in their own rights. They were slotted into other's preconceptions of the job-title, and woe-betide matrons who stepped out of that vision of the job! I think that if you tried to do things differently, the problem was that you were demolishing the idea that lots of staff had, of matrons, and it was this that then caused the conflict.
In once boarding house there was a stone plaque in rememberance of a particular matron. Thinking about it, it makes me rather despair - the poor women had lived her life solely in, and for, the school. She had no life that was hers alone. All she was was a matron. I don't mean that the job is nothing - it certainly is not! But she was only the job title, not a real person with real interests - and a real name of her own ...!
I did enjoy the job (although I would not go back to it), and I think that the school works as long as everyone knows their place within it, and stays within their place. Trying to change any job rather rocks the boat.
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I was so used to the repetition of Joey being Matey's heart's darling etc throughout the series I never took much notice, and then I thought that this claim in Goes to It that Matey would willingly lay down her life for Joey was a huge claim on EBD's part! Then I started to think, well why does this woman, who is mostly presented as a curmudgeonly old battleaxe obsessed with drawer inspections and mending, like Joey out of all the naughty CS girls she's scolded and nursed? 
), and so, even with prickly battle-axe evidence to the contrary, but showing that Matey loves Joey too indicates the soundness of Matey.
Again, I apologise if I upset anyone!! 
Thank you, Skye! Not sure I've ever seen the whole quotation and it's not quite the meaning I thought! I can see Matey dissembling her love in the sense of not showing overt favouritism, but it's left to 21st century friends of Joey to want to give her a kick now and then!
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