Florence Parsons began work as a nurse at Stannington Sanatorium in August 1945 when she was just 15 years old. She was born in September 1929 in Seaton Sluice and was the 7th of 8 children. Having left school at 14 she worked at a grocer's shop, Walter Wilson's, for a while before going to Stannington. Florence could easily have been one of the youngest nurses and may well have been younger than some of the patients, as the girls were able to stay until they were 16. In her oral history recording she recounts how she got the job and her first impressions of the place.

"I always remember coming home and saying I was writing for this job at Stannington out of the paper and my father saying, "Oh let her go, shell never get the job at her age." Well I got a letter to say I had the job. ...Miss Morgan, the Assistant Matron interviewed me because the matron was on holiday. They asked me why I wanted to be a nurse and said "next time you come for an interview where gloves." I was starting a week on the Monday and when I came home nobody would believe me. "

"When I first went there I was rather fascinated with my room having a desk in and dressing table having a room of your own after coming from a big family, I was really impressed with it all. We had a lovely lounge with a coal fire and we used to go down there and it had a grand piano so one of the nurses could play and we were always singing and everything. It was really the best quarters I've ever been in. We used to have good nights on Halloween night, it was Halloween night when I started actually, they had all the turnips done, I'd never seen that before."

"I was on Brough Ward first, it was an orthopaedic ward and there were children in plaster casts. The next one I went on to was medical. Usually you were on a ward 3 months. The ward after that I went on they called Long Ward, it was an upstairs ward and it was an admission ward and the biggest things on there was the dirty heads!"