Sarah Gamp

{{Short description|Fictional character in a Charles Dickens novel}}

File:Sarah Gamp (Barnard illustration).jpg]]

Sarah or Sairey Gamp, Mrs. Gamp as she is more commonly known, is a nurse in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, first published as a serial in 1843–1844.

Mrs. Gamp is dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk. In her long, rambling speeches, she refers constantly to her friend Mrs. Harris as support for her questionable practices. It becomes clear, however, that no such person exists other than as a figment of her imagination. She became a notorious stereotype of untrained and incompetent nurses of the early Victorian era,Hardy, Susan and Corones, Anthony, "The Nurse’s Uniform as Ethopoietic Fashion", Fashion Theory, Vol.21, No.5. (2015), pp. 523–552. [https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2016.1203090 doi=10.1080/1362704X.2016.1203090] 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.{{citation |title=Who's Who in Dickens |author=Donald Hawes |pages=84–86 |publisher=Routledge |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-415-26029-9}}{{citation |author=Summers, Annette

|title=Sairey Gamp: generating fact from fiction |journal=Nursing Inquiry |volume=4 |number=1 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing Ltd |doi=10.1111/j.1440-1800.1997.tb00132.x |year=1997 |pmid=9146274 |pages=14–8}}