Sairey Gamp, from 'Martin Chuzzlewit', 1923 (colour litho)

Sairey or Sarah Gamp; drunken and dissolute nurse, whose character became a notorious stereotype for the bad nurses in the early Victorian era, before the reforms of campaigners like Florence Nightingale; her caricature personality became popular with the British public and umbrellas became known as 'gamps' after her own umbrella which she displayed with 'particular ostentation'; character was based on a real nurse described to Dickens by his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts; illustration from the series of 'Character Sketches from Charles Dickens', produced as cigarette cards by John Player & Sons;