Dorothy Tutin starred in the title role in this trilogy of plays from Yorkshire Television that dramatised the life and work of nurse Dorothy Pattison – known as the Florence Nightingale of the Black Country – who almost single-handedly improved the virtually non-existent hospital facilities available to people injured in industrial accidents in the 1800s.
The daughter of a mentally deranged north Yorkshire clergyman (Bernard Archard), Dorothy joined the Christ Church sisterhood of the Good Samaritan (a religious nursing order), where she took the name Sister Dora and dedicated her life to the poor, the sick and the injured in the slums of Walsall between 1865 and her death in 1878.
Peter Cellier was her icily disapproving brother, Mark, James Grout played Dr Burton, in charge of the hospital, and there was further imaginative support from Patricia Garwood as Rachel Stirk and Roy Marsden as Redfern Davies.
Critics bemoaned many historical inaccuracies and the omission of major events in Sister Dora’s life (such as the Pelsall Pit Disaster of 1872).
The plays, written by Christopher Fry, were based on the biography of the same name by Jo Manson. Marc Miller produced and directed.
The real Sister Dora was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1877 and died on Christmas Eve 1878, aged 46.
Sister Dora (Dorothy Pattison)
Dorothy Tutin Dr Burton
James Grout Rachel Stirk
Patricia Garwood Mark Pattison
Peter Cellier Mrs Harrison
Dorothea Phillips Chairman
Raymond Francis Mr Welsh
Brian Spink Redfern Davies
Roy Marsden Robert Stirk
Malcolm Tierney Kenyon Jones
Michael Billington Mrs Pattison
Georgine Anderson Rev. Pattison
Bernard Archard Purchas Stirk
Stephen Yardley Jim Cranston
David Sibley Mother Theresa
Dorothy Alison
