Florence Nightingale

1820

Florence Nightingale was born to a wealthy British family living abroad in Florence, Italy. Hence her name. The family returned to England the following year where Florence was raised [LITL, 174].

1832

At 12, their father took over teaching, instructing in French, Latin, Greek, Mathematics, history and composition. The girls of the family were much better education than most girls.

1836

By 16, Florence recognized she typical life patterns for young women did not offer any path she could follow. She was good looking and well read and found that most boys her age bored her after a short time. She spent tour years touring the Continent, attending balls given by grand dukes, visited the opera in Florence and met the intellectual elite of Paris. By 19 she had had two proposals, but nothing interested Florence more than her own independence.

1850

A thirty year old unmarried Florence was frustrated and bored with her position within society. These views were shared with many. Women were trapped at home with few options to entertain or better themselves. Their time and energy was to be given over to others. Here she laments about the torture of being read to: “And what is it to be “read aloud to’? The most miserable exercise of the human intellect. Or rather, is it any exercise at all? It is like lying on one’s back, with one’s hands tied and having liquid poured down one’s throat. Worse than that, because suffocation would immediately ensue and put a stop to this operation. But no suffocation would stop the other…”

  • A young single woman was not considered an adult

  • An adult single woman was considered a failure, an embarrassment and a financial burden to the family.

  • She was also expected to be on call to tend on sick family. Read about Agnes Pockles experience here. (and how she made a new discovery by observing water and soap after hours of washing dishes and caring for her sick parents).

  • Philanthropy was one of the few acceptable ways for women to leave the house and have a role within society [TCOTP, 2]

  • The rise of social religious activities also gave women a place in society as Christianity spread across the middle class England especially within the Unitarian and Quaker branches.

At the age of 30 Florence was finally allowed to attend the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses to train as a nurse. When she arrived in Germany, she was horrified by the poor hygiene but impressed by the devotion of the nurses. She returned home to England and accepted a position at the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen [TCOTP, 6].

1853

At 33, Florence held her first job, unpaid of course, as resident superintendent of the Invalid Gentlewomen’s Institute in Upper Harley Street London. She didn’t make much of an impact in just a year. She heard news that King’s College Hospital was to be rebuilt and she hoped to get a position as a superintendent.

1854

The Time reported in graphic details the total inadequacy of the army in dealing with the sick and wounded soldiers fighting in the Crimean War.

Recognizing the need for action, Florence quickly sought the help of her neighbor, Lord Palmerson the Home Secretary, to establish a squadron of 38 nurses with Florence at the lead as Chief Medical Officer.

In October, Florence was asked to provide nursing services for British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War. She achieved a radical improvement in sanitary conditions in military hospitals. The conditions were dire, with a lack of basic sanitation causing a high mortality rate. Nightingale instituted hygiene practices that significantly reduced the death rate. She also wrote about her experiences and used statistical data to illustrate the need for sanitary reform in hospitals, which played a key role in her subsequent efforts to improve healthcare. Because of the extensive coverage by The Times, Florence soon became a household name and set an example for how middle-class women can have an important and significant impact on society outside of the home.

During the Crimean War (1854–1856), Florence felt the wrath of Military Surgeon James Barry (who turned out to be a woman working in disguise).  After Barry's death, Nightingale wrote that:

I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – from this Barry sitting on (her) horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square, with only my cap on, in the sun. (She) kept me standing in the midst of quite a crowd of soldiers, commissariat servants, camp followers etc etc, every one of whom behaved like a gentleman, during the scolding I received, while (she) behaved like a brute. After (she) was dead, I was told (he) was a woman. ... I should say (she) was the most hardened creature I ever met.

1855

By the spring of 1855 the mortality rate at the field hospital in Scutari dropped from 43% down to 2% [LITL, 175].

1856

Upon her return to England, at the age of 36 she was a national hero. She continued the work she started abroad, she established the first secular nursing school in the world, the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. This marked the beginning of professional education in nursing, raising the standards and status of the profession.

Frustrated with the lack of cooperation and coordination among woman as a whole, Florence often found herself frustrated. Though she seems to have felt like change wasn’t happening fast enough, she was slowly leading a revolution. She found her self on the opposite side of many arguments with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, but found a lifelong friend in Elizabeth Blackwell, but when Blackwell started her hospital and training program for women nurses and doctors, Nightingale declined to provide any support including financial support. She took a more “establishment” view of women doctors, believing well train nurses were more important.

The work of Florence Nightingale was noted by Chernyshevsky in his work What is to be done? Published in 1862/1863.

This was her dream and she knew it was only a dream. But she also loved to ponder the enviable fate of Miss Nightingale} that gentle} humble girl about whom no one knew very much-there was nothing to know except that she was beloved by all of England.284 Was she young? Rich or poor? Happy or unhappy? No one talked about that; no one thought about that. Everyone simply praised this girl who was the Angel of Mercy in English hospitals in the Crimea and Scutari}285 and who} at the end of the war} returned to her homeland with hundreds of men whom she'd saved and continued to take care of the infirm .... These were her dreams;

News of Florence Nightingale’s work during the Crimean War inspired women across the globe to take an interest in medicine. Many women felt helpless, trapped at home with no position in society and little to do to advance their own desires. Florence Nightingale gave women a position to strive for, a way to put their good intentions to work. Her biggest influence might have occurred in Russia where their defeat in the Crimean War forced a county to reflect about their poor technical and scientific position in the world.

Explore the influence Florence Nightingale had on young women in Russia and how it would lead to the First Woman Doctor in Europe - Dr. Nadezhda Suslova

Selected References:

[TCOTP] M. A. Elston, “Catriona Blake, The charge of the parasols: Women’s entry to the medical profession, London, The Women’s Press, 1990

[LITL] Creese MRS, Creese TM. Ladies in the laboratory? : American and British women in science, 1800-1900 : a survey of their contributions to research. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press; 1998.