Religious belief and its ugly reverse side, bigotry, strongly influenced all aspects of social policies in New South Wales, especially during the 1860s to 1880s. Nursing reform was an essential part of the modernisation of health care in the colony. Nurses’ claim to be motivated by a vocation and to embody cleanliness associated it, in the popular mind, with religion and sectarian convictions. Osburn’s religious beliefs, and the resultant controversy, adversely affected recruitment and was almost the undoing of reformed nursing in Sydney. There is substance to the claims that her management style was based on the convent and sisterhoods. It was, for both better and worse, a style that indelibly shaped Australian nursing, health care and women’s work.

If nursing was strongly affected by religious controversy, then the reverse was also true. The religious controversy surrounding nursing preoccupied both the press and parliament for at least a year; it was the subject of the 1870 inquiry, explored in this paper, as well as a focus of the Commission into Public Charities in 1873. They resonated with fears about communities of women and medieval images of persecution. The nursing controversy is an important reminder how religious conflict had a pervasive impact on attempts to improve social welfare in the colony of New South Wales.