Florence Nightingale

Born on 12th May 1820, Britain’s greatest campaigner for the medical welfare system was eternally happy that she had not been born in Bognor Regis. Her parents were very unimaginative when they chose names for their children: Florence was named after the beautiful Italian city close to where she was born; her sister, Parthenope, was named, not surprisingly, after the Greek part of the city of Naples.

From an early age Florence was single-minded and determined. In 1844 she announced to her family that she wanted to become a nurse, which outraged her mother.  Florence studied hard and educated herself in the male-dominated areas of science and ignored social expectations that she should stay at home and produce babies.

Nothing would stop this headstrong lady from achieving her goals. She rejected the love of several wealthy and attractive men, convinced that marriage would interfere with her career. One relationship that did develop into a lifelong friendship was between her and Sidney Herbert, a politician who held the position of Secretary of War. During the Crimean War Herbert would use his influence to help Florence with her pioneering work.

Florence decided that she needed to travel to study further so she travelled to Greece and Egypt before returning to London and becoming Superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in 1853.

By the following year news had started reaching home of the terrible conditions for the wounded in the Crimean War. Florence enlisted the help of her old friend Sidney Herbert and arranged passage for herself and 38 women volunteers to Turkey, arriving at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari in November 1854. She found that the soldiers were lying in dirty, neglected conditions. Their wounds were not being treated and disease was rife throughout the camp.

During Florence’s first winter at Scutari 4,077 soldiers died. Ten times more of them died of typhoid, cholera and dysentery than of war wounds. It took six months before the British government sent out inspectors to investigate the conditions at the hospital. They immediately ordered the cleaning of the sewers and improvements to the ventilation.

Contrary to popular myth, Florence was not single-handedly responsible for the drop in the death rate: she thought that things could be improved by better food and supplies and not overworking the soldiers in the first place, though she did live up to her name of 'The Lady of the Lamp' by walking the wards at night to check on the sick.

Florence’s hard work caring for the soldiers was recognised by the setting up of the Nightingale Fund for the training of nurses. Sidney Herbert became the honorary secretary and by 1859 Florence had £45,000 to set up the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital. The first trained nurses began their new careers in 1865.

When Florence returned to Britain and had time to look over her reports and investigations she came to realise the importance of sanitation and hygiene when dealing with the sick. She later wrote “Every day sanitary knowledge, or the knowledge of nursing, or in other words, of how to put the constitution in such a state as that it will have no disease, or that it can recover from disease, takes a higher place.” Her ‘Notes on Nursing’ published in 1859 became a popular book with the general public and was soon considered to be a classic introduction to nursing.

By 1882, Nightingale nurses had become leading figures in hospitals throughout the country and even in Australia. Their teaching techniques passed on Florence’s ideas and practices and spread the word of good nursing.
In recognition of her services to the nursing world Florence was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria in 1883 and in 1907 she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.

Florence Nightingale died on 13th August 1910. She had been bedridden for several years but continued to work on hospital planning from her own sickbed. Her family refused to allow her to be interred in Westminster Abbey: instead she was buried at St Margaret's Church in East Wellow, Hampshire.