Casualty 1906

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Broadcast internationally as Casualty 1906, this is a Spin-Off In Name Only of Casualty.

This is a single episode (1906), 3 part series (1907), and a six part series (1909) dramatized from the hospital records of The London Hospital (located in Whitechapel in the East End) focusing on the equivalent location as its modern counterpart (The Receiving Room, although we see wards too) save that all the cases and characters are historically accurate. Perhaps of more interest to amateur historians than it is to drama fans it is still riveting and thoroughly enjoyable.

Tropes used in Casualty 1906 include:

• Allergic to Love: Bedford Fenwick has a panic attack because he Cannot Spit It Out to Miss Luckes. The "love" part is not outright stated but implied by the sheer awkwardness of the scene.
• Bait and Switch Tyrant: Ada from 1907 through to 1909.
• Benevolent Boss: Sydney Holland.
• Book Ends: Episode 5 of 1909 starts and ends with a "Scrub" mopping the floors.
• Brainy Brunette: Ethel.
• British Stuffiness: 1907 shows that Miss Luckes seems to be suffering as a result of this and being Married to the Job.
• Brother Chuck: Probationer Veveers, who was the token South Asian.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Probationers wear lilac, nurses have pink and ward sisters wear blue.
• Custom Uniform: Matron
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Averted, in that CPR didn't exist back then. When a child's heart stops after a problem with the anaesthesia, Silvester's method (which involves moving the arms back and forth) is used instead. This method is now banned in the UK.
• Dangerous Workplace: Both the cause of a lot of injuries and, in the pre-antibiotic era, the hospital itself.
• Docu Drama
• Dr. Jerk: Mr Dean.
• Dumb Blonde: Probationer Chuck was replaced in 1909 by Nurse Ansett, the token blonde who couldn't do anything right for an episode, including thinking, in regards to Women's Suffrage, "Things work best when everyone knows their place."
• The Edwardian Era: Complete with the hats (on occasion).
• Evil Matriarch: Matron has her moments. See the Kick the Dog entry below.
• False Start: See the Allergic to Love entry.
• Fridge Brilliance: A double whammy for the exchange between Miss Luckes and Sydney Holland in the 1909 finale. Firstly, Sydney saying that she would be remembered as one of the most able women of her generation implies that she did not succeed in medicine due to a genuine lack of medical competence and not institutional sexism (although this would have played a part in it) like that she which imposes on her own nurses. However, this is more than counterbalanced by him telling her that he has no regrets about her asking him to come to The London, indicating that he constantly scrambles for funds for the hospital when he could easily find a cushier, better-paid job not solely because of a vocation to help the poor, but that he does it for her.
  • Seeing as both Matron Luckes and Sydney Holland, 2nd Viscount Knutsford, where both real people there was no attempt made my Luckes to become a doctor, but she is remembered as one of the most able women of her time, debatably having as much impact on nursing standards and hospital cleanliness as Florence Nightingale (for example deciding that a nurse should be assessed at the end of her training and that it might be a good idea for her to have a basic understanding of medicine, rather than have no idea what she was doing while assisting doctors.) She was also only 25 when she was made matron, extremely young for a job that senior. At the time the show is set he was infact on the board of two hospitals and a railway company, but gave most of his time to the hospitals.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Laura and Saul
• Gray's Anatomy: One of Ethel's medical books.
• Headbutt of Love: Miss Luckes and Sydney Holland
• Heroic BSOD: Ada, when she loses her engagement ring in a vat of porridge.
• Hold Me: Inverted:

Ethel:What are you thinking now? Dr. Culpin: How much I'd like to come over there...and hold you.

• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Anna Baker, or at least it's heavily suggested that that is her line of work.
• Hospital Hottie: Despite the fact that the nurses' uniforms leave everything to the imagination. This was, of course, the norm for the time.
• It Got Worse: The revelation of The Not-Secret that the viewers and most of the characters are in on Dr. Culpin is training Ethel to be a doctor leads to the audience learning the hospital's big Not Secret: They don't train female doctors because at some point in the past, Matron Luckes attempted to become a doctor and failed, and therefore propagates the view that "The profession is not suited to women."
• Kick the Dog: Matron seems to enjoy sending Ethel away to private nursing way, way too much:

Ethel: (reading her letter of introduction in abject horror)... Condition - piles. Matron: Remember to warm your hands.

• Knight Fever: The show includes Sir Henry Head
• Liz Lemon Job: Miss Luckes somewhat, considering that she seems to spend most of her time attempting to steer the nurses, particularly Ada and Ethel, away from protocol-related disaster as well as nervous breakdowns and very little time on the wards.
  • Truth in Television, Matron Luckes was a real person and in any case the Matron was more or less the manager of the hospital's medical staff at the time.
• London Town
• Married to the Job: All the nurses are compelled to do this, to the point where they get the sack if they are found out to be married, although this was, for the most part, Truth in Television until The Sixties. Ada seems to cope the worst with it.
• Medical Drama:
• Moment Killer: Subverted: the aforementioned "Scrub" is seen at the end interrupting the kiss between Ethel and Dr. Culpin, although if anything this intensifies the moment rather than kills it.
• Mood Whiplash: The finale of 1909 has a serious case of this, although it's not entirely to its detriment.
• Must Have Caffeine: Ethel, studying into the wee small hours, stops for a moment and utters just one word:

"Tea."

• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Ada towards the end of 1909.
• One of Our Own: Ethel contracts scarlet fever and is sent to isolation.
• Period Drama
• Politically-Correct History: Completely averted. You've got plenty of racist views being expressed here.
• Professor Guinea Pig: Anton Lesser's psychiatrist character asks someone to perform an operation on him in order to experience the emotions the patients go through prior to operations. He also cuts a nerve in his arm, believing that it may never reconnect, only to find that it does regrow.
• Quintessential British Gentleman: All the male medics. Mr. (Hurry) Fenwick is probably the best example of the trope, whereas Dr. Culpin is closest to the real thing.
• Secret Relationship: Ethel and Dr. Culpin. But as is the want of said Secret Relationship, it doesn't stay that way for long, although no one besides the couple conclusively knows the full extent of the relationship
• Ship Tease: The very tail end (before the factoids) of the season finale of 1909. They even use the same background music from the kiss in the previous episode.
• Show Within a Show: The Merry Peasant - a light opera, back in the days when "Light Opera" really did mean "Light Opera".
• Stock British Phrases: Natch.
• Team Mom: Ada in 1909 to the rest of the nurses.
• Time Skip: Between the series.
• Unequal Pairing: Ethel and Dr. Culpin. Starts out as more towards Hot for Student but eventually segues into a slightly more equal Mentor Ship.
• Will They or Won't They?: Ethel and Dr. Culpin.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: This is the East End of London of the 1900s, which had a very considerable Eastern European Jewish population.