Green’s Dictionary of Slang

nurse n.

a common name for a homosexual barber.

[UK]J. Dalton Narrative of Street-Robberies 35: They fell in amongst a Company of Sodomites, who bullied Dalton; one call’d Nurse Ashcroft, and another call’d Fish Hannah. [Ibid.] 33: Nurse Mitchel is a Barber of this Society.