Consists of correspondence sent by Elizabeth Alice Pitcher to her father, W. Lester Pitcher; stepmother, Allura E. Pitcher; and brother, Warren E. “Bud” Pitcher, in Camden, Maine. The only exceptions being two letters from one of Betty’s young patients, ‘Jimmy,’ sent when she was sick for several days. Betty’s letters recount her life at the Nursing School including the rigorous schedule, classes, tests and quizzes, being on the wards, and life with her fellow students. She frequently requests items from home, especially in her first year in Boston.

She notes when friends and family visit her in Boston, especially her brother “Bud” who enlisted in the Navy and was at a training station in Rhode Island as of late 1941. She writes of moments when she is able to venture away from the school to shop (Filene’s Basement, Jordan Marsh), see concerts or movies, visit local cultural attractions (Harvard’s museum, Museum of Fine Arts), or go to church.

She describes a number of patients put under her care, both in terms of their ailments and behavior, and frequently enumerates cases she has witnessed: polio, scarlet fever outbreaks in the hospital, bone transplant, omphalocele, tracheotomies, asthma, diabetes, viral pneumonia, and other maladies. She notes her rotations through the wards, from surgical, orthopedics, isolation, and the ‘Diet Kitchen,’ to short stints in adult wards at Brigham Hospital.

The letters are an excellent source of cultural history as Betty mentions people, places, events, and bits of popular culture. One letter’s postscript relays that she watched U.S. presidential hopeful Wendell L. Wilkie parade past the school during his campaign tour in 1940. She states that Wilkie looked directly at her and waved.

One item of interest is a letter sent with a bulletin on air raid procedures for students and staff from December 1941. The impact of the war is evident in other letters, such as one that mentions the abandonment of plans to build a new facility for the hospital. Betty occasionally notes that more and more doctors and nurses leaving for service posts, and ponders nursing in the Army or Navy after graduation (though she does not go through with this plan). Her final letter home is sent just before graduation from the Boston Children’s Nursing School.