First Day Cover

14 May 1957

Private Collection

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In 1957, the Plunket Society turned fifty and a postage stamp was designed to commemorate the Jubilee occasion. It featured a portrait of Truby King, the first to characterise a New Zealand-born person. Several First Day covers were also issued as part of the celebrations. At the time the Society was going strong: six hospitals nationwide with 100 branches and 300 sub-branches, and some 240 trained nurses. By the time Plunket turned 75 in 1982, Plunket Nurses no longer wore a stiff and starched uniform; nor did they entirely adhere to King’s strict rules on child-rearing laid down almost eighty years earlier.