Minor Private Hospital was built in 1906 on the corner of Spring and Harvard Streets in Seattle's First Hill neighborhood. In September 1906, a school for nurses was established at the hospital. In a three-year course of training, the hospital provided the nursing students with the basic clinical and practical experience considered necessary. There was a minimum of formal classroom instruction. The hospital hired only supervisory nurses, so the student nurses provided the patient care and housekeeping. Probationers, as student nurses were called, worked eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week, and were expected to adhere to a strict code of conduct and obey physicians and supervisors without question. At the end of the program, students received a diploma and were eligible to work as a trained nurse, earning about five dollars a week in 1910.

This photograph shows two nursing caps worn by nurses at the Minor Private Hospital. The cap on the right is the original Minor Hospital nursing cap used from 1907 until 1918. During the war, however, the cap of the left was adopted because of the difficulty in obtaining the ruching fabric used to create the ruffle in the original cap.