Bush DAC10 radio presented by Student Nurses, GOSH, 1951

[earlywireless]

Some time ago I was given an old Bush valve radio, model DAC10. It had an intriguing silver plaque on the top that read:

'In Gratitude from the Student Nurses of the Hospital for Sick Children Great Ormond Street January 1951'.

I have attached a photo of the set for you.

I would love to know the background to this radio; to whom was it gifted and upon what occasion?  I did contact the Archivist and Curator at GOSH but he could not give me any information other than a possible link to the former Charles West School of Nursing.

Might anyone out there have any background information about this enigmatic radio.

Many thanks, Lorne Clark, Archivist to the British Vintage Wireless Society.

[backman]

Thanks Lorne,A nice looking radio. Whilst the GOSH Archives couldn't help there may just be someone out there who might know? I will trawl through any Nursing Journals of the time,in my collection but don't hold out too much hope. The possible explanations are the retirement of a Nurse tutor at the hospital and as this being a retirement gift,however it is unusual that it is not specifically named.I have have seen all manner of silver gifts,clocks,etc as being retirement gifts to senior staff but they are often engraved with full details of the recipient?

[earlywireless]

Thanks very much for your reply and kind offer to look through period Nursing Journals; much appreciated. I've been giving this some further thought and wonder, given the lack of any named individual on the plaque, whether the radio might have been gifted by the Student Nurses to GOSH itself, perhaps for use in a Common Room?

[backman]

I suppose that is possible, what sort of retail price would this radio have had at the time as a comparison with salaries for students in the 1950s would give a relative value?

[earlywireless]

Launched in January 1950, the Bush DAC10 had a retail price of £14 16s 0d, quite a lot of money then. Interestingly, GOSH opened a school for the children in 1951, the same year the radio was gifted. A link perhaps? Might the radio have been a gift from grateful student nurses to that new school? I believe radio was seen as quite an important educational 'tool' then,  so GOSH would likely have been very pleased with such a gift. Another theory!

[backman]

I have been giving this some thought and believe it is more and more likely to be a presentation set to an individual.I presume that this is a fairly standard domestic type radio of the times? In most of the photographs I have seen of the use of radio in hospital,the patients are always wearing individual headphones.The idea of unregulated noise in hospitals in that time and up to the 1970s was anathema. I am not sure what period the first hospital radio transmissions began but they all seemed to be from a dedicated system.There might potentially have been a radio in a Day Room but I am not sure of the likelihood of this in a children's hospital.
I still think the most likely scenario is a leaving gift from a collective group of probationers to a tutor? Unless it is detailed in an article in a Hospital nurses league magazine of the time though it may be impossible to confirm?