The Sister Dora statue in #Walsall was the first statue to be erected for a female who was not a Royal. We find out more about the lady who gave her all for the community.
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00:00This is the Sister Dora statue in Walsall and it's the annual commemoration event.
00:05Introduce yourself madam. Yes I'm Anita Edwards, I'm the lay minister here at St Paul's Church
00:11at the Crossing which was Sister Dora's church that she attended when she lived here in Walsall.
00:18So a lot of people I guess will know the name Sister Dora, they'll know the statue.
00:22Who was Sister Dora? Why should we remember her? So she was originally born Dorothy Winlow
00:27Paterson, the 10th of 11 children to a Church of England vicar up in Hawkswell in West Yorkshire.
00:35She knew from the age of six that she wanted to be a nurse but wasn't sure how she'd achieve that.
00:41Her father was very controlling, wouldn't let her leave home. When her mother died her mother
00:46left her a bequest of £90 that enabled her first to become a teacher, she then became a nun and
00:54through becoming a nun joined an order that did work and that work included nursing. In the 1860s,
01:03in about 1865 she was asked to come here to Walsall as a relief nurse to work in what was
01:09the accident hospital, working with mainly men who suffered terrible industrial injuries.
01:17Together with other people in the town she created a new cottage hospital to treat the people of
01:23Walsall. She did home visits which was remarkably new, she worked through two smallpox epidemics,
01:31the Pelsall mining colliery disaster and the blast furnace disaster in Green Lane
01:37and she devoted her the rest of her very short life, she died at 46 from breast cancer, to the
01:44people of Walsall and their health. She really did didn't she? It wasn't a nine to five for her,
01:50she turned down marriage proposals, her life was devoted to others wasn't it? Yeah completely and
01:55absolutely, yes at least two marriage proposals that were aware of including one from Redfern
02:02Davis who was the hospital doctor of the time and she had a close relationship with a man called
02:08Royston Jones who ran the blast furnace in Green Lane but she saw, especially as a woman in the
02:1519th century, that if she were to marry she'd have to give up her work and her work and her
02:20ministry because it was rooted in her faith in God meant that she wasn't willing to do that.
02:27And her grave is here in Walsall isn't it? It is in Queen Street Cemetery, you can still visit it,
02:33people do, people still leave flowers, I think it's a mark of how special Sister Dora is here
02:40in this town. Yeah and this statue, it wasn't, it's not the original statue, the original was marble I
02:46believe? Yes the original was erected in 1886, it was the first statue to a woman who wasn't a member
02:55of the royal family in this country. It suffered from the pollution that was brought in an industrial
03:03town and in 1957 the statue that we see here that used to sit a bit further behind us was erected
03:11to her lasting memory and we have a service every year in her home church here at St Paul's
03:18to remember her amazing life and contribution to this town. And she worked in conditions that as a
03:26trade unionist who works in the health service I would have never agreed to anybody working in.
03:35And ultimately Dora gave her life for the work that she was called to and she died at the age
03:42of 46 from breast cancer. She refused to have treatment because she believed that that would
03:50shorten her ability to offer herself in this place.