This dental nurse’s veil was worn by New Plymouth woman Diane Flavell from 1957-61.
Diane did her dental two years of training at Willis Street, Wellington, in 1956 and ’57.
First-year students wore a cap, like those worn by medical nurses. In the second year, trainee dental nurses wore veils, made from a material, Diane describes as “a fine lawn, almost organza, but with a very tight weave”.
“The veils were very dangerous because we all had Bunsen burners to heat, at the time, copper pellets so they softened and we mixed them with a mortar and pestle and when they were mixed we put them in a little piece of gauze and squeezed out the mercury.”
“Often you would turn around to talk to the patient or the parent and you would be too close and because your veil was very spiky and stiff and beautifully starched you caught the end of the flame,” Diane says.
“Often you wouldn’t know until the patient said ‘you are on fire’. My whole veil never went up in flames. You went through lots of veils because they were always getting singed and burnt and you had to get another one.
“There were lots of cases of them going up completely in flames. I can’t remember anyone getting hurt. You just pulled them off and threw them in the sink.”
The trainee dental nurses also had weekly competitions to see who could turn the veil into the most spectacular headdress.
In the early days of training, which began about 1921, the dental nurses wore the veils low down on their foreheads. In the 1950s, the modern way was to wear it further back on the head.
“We used to have two that we starched every weekend,” Diane says. “This was not the spray-on stuff. This was the stuff you mixed up and we dipped them (the veils) and hung them on the line.
“Then we sprinkled water all over them and rolled them up to get them damp and then we ironed until they were smooth and as stiff as a board.”
Diane says that the veils were pleated on to a student’s head by their roommate. This would ensure the veil fitted perfectly. “There were always three pleats on the right side and three pleats on the left. The band would come round and join it one from the last pleat.”
The band was pinned in place. “It was really important that it looked perfect,” Diane says.
Veils were phased out in the mid-1960s because they were deemed too dangerous.