HISTORIA YA FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
Florence
Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 at the Villa La Columbaia in Florence; she
was named after the city of her birth. Her father, William Edward Nightingale
(1794-1874), was son of William Shore, a Sheffield banker. When Nightingale
came of age on 21 February 1815 he inherited the Derbyshire estates at Lea
Hurst and Woodend in Derbyshire from, and assumed the surname of Peter
Nightingale, his mother's uncle. On 1 June 1818 he married Frances Smith, a
strong supporter of the abolition
of slavery. They had two daughters, Parthenope
and Florence. "Parthe" was given the classical name of Naples where
she was born.
Florence Nightingale was brought up at Lea Hall; in 1825 the
family moved to Lea Hurst which Nightingale had just built. In 1826 he also
bought Embley Park, in Hampshire and in1828 he became High Sheriff of the
county. The family invariably spent the summer at Lea Hurst and the winter at
Embley Park, occasionally visiting London. Florence Nightingale had a broad
education and came to dislike the lack of opportunity for females in her social
circle. She began to visit the poor but became very interested in looking after
those who were ill. She visited hospitals in London and around the country to
investigate possible occupations for women there. However, nursing was seen as employment
that needed neither study nor intelligence; nurses were considered to be little
less than prostitutes at that time.
Nightingale's hospital visits began in 1844 and continued
for eleven years. She spent the winter and spring of 1849-50 in Egypt with
family friends; on the journey from Paris she met two St. Vincent de Paul
sisters who gave her an introduction to their convent at Alexandria.
Nightingale saw that the disciplined and well-organised Sisters made better
nurses than women in England. Between 31 July to 13 August 1850, Nightingale
made her first visit to the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses at
Kaiserswerth. The institute had been founded for the care of the destitute in
1833 and had grown into a training school for women teachers and nurses. Her
visit convinced Nightingale of the possibilities of making nursing a vocation
for ladies. In 1851 she spent four months at Kaiserswerth, training as a sick
nurse. When she returned home, she undertook more visits to London hospitals;
in the autumn of 1852 she inspected hospitals in Edinburgh and Dublin. In 1853
she accepted her first administrative post when she became superintendent of
the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen.
Florence Nightingale Receiving the
Wounded at Scutari — 1856 — The Mission of Mercy by Jerry Barrett. Click on
thumbnail for larger picture.
In March 1854 the Crimean
War broke out and the reports of the
sufferings of the sick and wounded in the English camps created anger in
Britain. William Russell, The Times' correspondent, described the terrible neglect of the
wounded, and pointed to the differences between the facilities provided for
British and French soldiers. He asked: ‘Are there no devoted women among us,
able and willing to go forth to minister to the sick and suffering soldiers of
the East in the hospitals of Scutari? Are none of the daughters of England, at
this extreme hour of need, ready for such a work of mercy? Must we fall so far
below the French in self-sacrifice and devotedness?’ (The Times,
15 and 22 September 1854).
Nightingale offered her services to the War Office on 14
October but her friend Sidney Herbert — the Secretary for War — already had
written to her, suggesting that she should go out to the Crimea. Herbert said
that she would 'have plenary authority over all the nurses and ... the fullest
assistance and co-operation from the medical staff'. He also promised
'unlimited power of drawing on the government for whatever you think requisite
for the success of your mission'.
Nightingale embarked for the Crimea on 21 October with
thirty-eight nurses: ten Roman Catholic Sisters, eight Anglican Sisters of
Mercy, six nurses from St. John's Institute, and fourteen from various
hospitals; Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, also went with her. Nightingale refused
the offer of service by Mary
Seacole. They reached Scutari on 4 November
— the eve of the battle of Inkerman. Nightingale's official title was ‘Superintendent of the
Female Nurses in the Hospitals in the East’; but she came to be known generally
as ‘The Lady-in-Chief.’
Florence Nightingale [in hospital, advising] by Arthur George Walker, R.A. 1861-1936. Bronze. Part of
the Crimean War Memorial located at the junction of Lower Regent Street and
Pall Mall, London.
Her headquarters were in the barrack hospital at Scutari, a
huge, filthy place where infection was rife. Stores had not got beyond Varna or had been lost at
sea. Descriptions from Nightingale and
her nurses give some idea of the conditions there:
There were no vessels for water or utensils of any kind; no
soap, towels, or clothes, no hospital clothes; the men lying in their uniforms,
stiff with gore and covered with filth to a degree and of a kind no one could
write about; their persons covered with vermin . . .
We have not seen a drop of milk, and the bread is extremely
sour. The butter is most filthy; it is Irish butter in a state of
decomposition; and the meat is more like moist leather than food. Potatoes we
are waiting for, until they arrive from France . . .
The
military and medical
authorities at Scutari viewed Nightingale's
intervention as a reflection on themselves. Many of her own volunteers were
inexperienced, and the behaviour of the orderlies was offensive to the women.
However, before the end of 1854, Nightingale and her nurses had brought the
Scutari hospital into better order. The relief
fund organised by The Times sent
out stores; other voluntary associations at home were helpful. In December
forty-six more nurses went to the Crimea. Nightingale quickly established a
vast kitchen and a laundry; she looked after the soldiers' wives and children,
and to provided daily necessities for them. She was on her feet for twenty
hours a day and her nurses were also overworked; however, she was the only
woman whom she allowed to be in the wards after eight at night, when the other
nurses' places were taken by orderlies. The wounded men called her ‘The Lady of
the Lamp.’ Longfellow tried to express the feelings for Nightingale in his
poem, Santa
Filomena.
Florence Nightingale [[at hospital door as wounded soldiers
arrive] by Arthur George Walker, R.A.
1861-1936. Bronze. Part of the Crimean War Memorial located at the junction of
Lower Regent Street and Pall Mall, London.
Early in 1855, because of the defects in the sanitation
system, there was a great increase in the number of cases of cholera and of
typhus fever among Nightingale's patients. Seven of the army doctors and three
of the nurses died. Frost-bite and dysentery from exposure in the trenches
before Sevastopol made the wards fuller than before. There were over 2000 sick
and wounded in the hospital and in February 1855 the death-rate rose to 42%.
The War Office ordered the sanitary commissioners at Scutari to carry out
sanitary reforms immediately, after which the death-rate declined rapidly until
in June it had fallen to 2%.
In May 1855 Nightingale visited the hospitals at and near
Balaclava along with Mr. Bracebridge and Alexis
Soyer. Nightingale fell ill from Crimean
fever and she was dangerously ill for twelve days. Early in June she returned
to Scutari and resumed her work there. In addition to her nursing work she
tried to provide reading and recreation rooms for the men and their families.
In March 1856 she returned to Balaclava and remained there until July when the
hospitals were closed. She returned to England privately in August 1856, in a
French ship. She entered England unnoticed and went home to Lea Hurst.
In September 1856 Nightingale visited Queen
Victoria at Balmoral and told the Queen and Prince
Albert about everything that 'affects our
present military hospital system and the reforms that are needed'. In November
1855 a Nightingale fund had been set up to found a training school for nurses.
This was the only recognition of her services of which Nightingale would
approve. By 1860, £50,000 had been collected and the Nightingale School and
Home for Nurses was established at St.
Thomas's Hospital. Nightingale's health and other
occupations prevented her from accepting the post of superintendent but she
watched the progress of the new institution with practical interest. She was
able to use her experiences in the Crimea for the benefit of the nursing
profession.
She settled in London and lived the retired life of an
invalid, although she spent a great deal of time offering advice and
encouragement through her writing and also verbally. In 1857 she issued an
exhaustive and confidential report on the workings of the army medical
departments in the Crimea and in 1858 she published Notes on Matters
affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British
Army. In 1858 a Commission was appointed to inquire into the sanitary
condition of the army: it set a high value on her evidence. In 1859 an army
medical college was opened at Chatham and the first military hospital was
established in Woolwich in 1861. During the American Civil War and the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 her advice was sought by the respective
governments. Nightingale was involved in establishing the East London Nursing
Society (1868), the Workhouse Nursing Association and National Society for providing
Trained Nurses for the Poor (1874) and the Queen's Jubilee Nursing Institute
(1890).
When the Indian
Mutiny broke out in 1857 Nightingale
offered to leave for India immediately if there was anything she could do. Her
services were not required but she became interested in the sanitary condition
of the army and people there. From her work, a Sanitary Department was
established in the Indian government. She became familiar with many facets of Indian
life and demanded that there should be improvements in health and sanitation
there. She did not visit India. She wrote papers on the causes of famine, the
need of irrigation and the poverty of the people of India. In 1890 she
contributed a paper on village sanitation in India. Her book, Notes on
Nursing first appeared in 1860 and was reprinted many times during in her
lifetime.
She received was the Order of Merit in 1907 and in 1908 she
was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. She had already received the
German order of the Cross of Merit and the French gold medal of Secours aux
Blessés Militaires. On 10 May 1910 she was presented with the badge of honour
of the Norwegian Red Cross Society. Nightingale died in South Street, Park
Lane, London, on 13 August 1910 at the age of ninety and was buried on 20
August in the family plot at East Wellow, Hampshire. An offer of burial in
Westminster Abbey was refused by her relatives. Memorial services took place in
St. Paul's Cathedral and Liverpool Cathedral, among many other places.
Related
Material
Bostridge, Mark. Florence Nightingale: The Making of an
Icon. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008.
Larsen, Timothy. "St. Flo." Books and Culture:
A Christian Review 14 (November-December 2008): 16-17. [Review of recent
editions and biographies]
"Her commemoration in the Church of England calendar (on August 13), makes her as close to a Protestant
can get to being officially recognized as a saint."
Nightingale, Florence. The Collected Works. Ed. Lynn MacDonald.
Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2001-. The edition will
eventually 19 volumes. The first volume contains an introduction to her life
and works, the next two her Bible annotations, sermons, and other material
related to her Broad
Church religious beliefs.
