WE HAVE rarely come across a more flagrant example of the insolence of elected persons than the action of the Romford Board of Guardians in forbidding the infirmary nurses to bob their hair. One of the common-sense minority, opposed to this petty interference with personal liberty, made the admirable suggestion that a full-sized model of Mr. Bumble should be erected in the nurses’ home. Nurses are notoriously overworked and underpaid. It is adding insult to injury for Guardians to dictate the length of the nurses’ hair. Is it believed that a woman’s hair must be long before she is competent to take a temperature or measure out medicine? As a matter of fact short hair — we do not attach importance to the mysterious difference between “bobbing” and shingling — has obvious advantages for working women and particularly, as it seems to us, for infirmary nurses. We suggest to the Ministry of Health that these Romford tyrants should be sharply rapped over the knuckles.

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