I have made some amendments for clarity.
Yes. Green horning is a North East England expression, its origins being unclear, but its what you get if you cut a newly developed ram’s horns to early. I guess they must have turned green in some way. It came to mean cutting somebody out of an activity before they had a chance to settle in and achieve. This transformed into "if you get past being green horned your in". It then became to mean the point of being accepted and not "a green horn". Then it became the process of being accepted, that is being not a green horn" or the activity which caused you not to have green horns any more. Since it came out of rural communities and not urban communities it took on the notion of it being in some way not sanctioned by the powers that be, which tend to have their offices in urban areas. Hence the term being used in a nursing context referring to the unofficial ceremonies of acceptance into nursing. In short it’s a synonym for initiation.
You can also refer to someone as being a green horn, meaning young and inexperience, or being “useless but likeable”.
Blue-dressing. Back when nurses wore proper uniforms and not the pairs of pyjamas that seem common these days. Each grade of nurse could be identified by the colour of their dress. Fawn was for auxiliaries, white was for cadets, pupil, and student nurses, green was for State Enrolled Nurses (SEN), light blue was for State Registered Nurses (SRN) or staff nurses (because you where now on the staff of the hospital), Navy for sisters, and a blue-green colour for matrons.
To distinguish cadets, pupils, and student nurses hospitals had slightly different methods but the must common one(s) was as follows, cadets wore a yellow belt or fawn, with a yellow or fawn stripe on their hat, pupil nurses trainee SENs wore a orange or tan belt, with orange or tan stripe(s) on their hat, one stripe for a first year, and two for a second year, students trainee SRNs who are now called RGNs or RNs wore a white belt with or without a navy stripe, and one, two or three navy stripes on their hats for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd years. After they took their finals and passed but where awaiting registration they wore plain hats no stripes, and a navy belt.
Nurse’s dresses became know as colours. For example, ‘get your colours off”. Meant take your dress off literally, or stop hiding behind your rank.
Blue dressing (or blue Dress-in) was the fun and games surrounding becoming a staff nurse, getting and being entitled to wear the blue dress. Navy dressing (or Dress-in) was the fun and games around being promoted to a sister. Dress-in was used to mean being put in your dress or being allowed to be in that coloured dress. Fun and games tended to stop at this point because matron grades which became know as nursing officers, senior nursing officers, principal nursing officers, assistant district nursing officers, district nursing officer, where all management, and regarded as none working nurses who’d betrayed the sisterhood. In all my years I can never remember of ever hearing of one being the butt of a prank and they were always saying, “This sort of thing never happened in my day” they were also called politely kill-joys, miserable bitches, and some terms which I can’t bare to put down in print.
Hope this background helps.
