A NURSE who was working in Edinburgh when the NHS was formed has met the Duke of Cambridge as part of the organisation’s 70th birthday celebrations.

Catherine Reid met Prince William during an event at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh last Thursday.

Mrs Reid, known as Kit, told how she exchanged early memories of her nursing career and the transition into the NHS with the royal guest.

She said: “My first pay was two pound notes and a 10 shilling note. The week before national health it was seven (shillings) and six (pence).”

Mrs Reid, of Haddington worked as a nurse from 1946 until 1952 and spent some of her career at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. The grandmother of five, with triplets in Seattle and a grandson in Saskatchewan, Canada, and a further grandson at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The Duke was absolutely normal.

“He spoke to me and asked various things about the work I had done.

“Obviously he had been briefed because he asked me about the pay and for what felt like a long time he spoke to me.

“He was just so charming – it was the thrill of a lifetime, the whole thing.

“I met so many wonderfully interesting people – people from Orkney and Shetland, from all over Scotland, with their own stories to tell.

“It was just absolutely wonderful – I even got to walk on a red carpet.”

Mrs Reid said that the NHS had made a massive difference to the way of life across Scotland and said she was “all for” the NHS.

The 90-year-old, who also met Scotland’s new Health Secretary Jeane Freeman MSP, added: “My first memory of work was the knowledge that the hospital was getting much busier and there were more children coming in and going out cured. Before that, the parents couldn’t afford medical help and were leaving it too late for their children to come in and many of them didn’t make it.

“Also I remember saying to the sister I was working with at the time: ‘The parents coming in now have lost their terribly haunted look because they know now they can bring their children in.’”

She told how the nurses had to live on-site in those days and would therefore tend to give up work when they became married.

Mrs Reid added: “We weren’t allowed to live out of hospital, we had to stay in the nurses’ homes.

“I loved it – I loved the camaraderie, I loved the company, I loved everything about it.

“It wasn’t all drudgery and hard work, we had lots of fun into the bargain.”

The evening reception, attended by 700 people, was one of a series of events taking place around the UK to mark 70 years since the health service was founded.

During the engagement, Prince William watched a short film about the history of the NHS and listened to singing by the NHS Forth Valley Nurses Choir.