Florence Nightingale was born on the 12th of May 1820 into a wealthy
well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, in Florence, Tuscany,
Italy. And was named after the city of her birth. She was an English social reformer
and statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Florence's older sister
Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth. Parthenope
a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples. The family moved back to
England in 1821 with Nightingale being brought up in the family's homes at
Embley, Hampshire and Lea Hurst, Derbyshire. Florence inherited a liberal
humanitarian outlook from both sides of her family, her parents were William
Edward Nightingale and Frances Nightingale. In 1838 her father took the
family on a tour in Europe when he was introduced to the English born Parisian
hostess Mary Clark with whom Florence bonded. She recorded that "Clarkey" was a
stimulating hostess who did not care for her appearance and while her ideas did
not always agree with those of her guests she was incapable of boring
anyone. Her behaviour was set to be exasperating and eccentric and she had no
respect for upper class British women whom she regarded generally as
inconsequential. But she and Florence were to remain close friends for 40
years despite their 27 year age difference.
Nightingale underwent the first of several experiences that she believed
were calls from God in February 1837 while at Embley Park, prompting a
strong desire to devote her life to the service of others.
In her youth she was respectful of her family's opposition to her working as a
nurse only announcing her decision to enter the field in 1844. As a young woman
Nightingale was described as attractive, slender and graceful
while her demeanor was often severe, she was said to be very charming and to
possess a radiant smile. Her most persistent suitor was the politician and
poet Richard Monckton Milnes, but after a nine-year courtship she rejected him,
convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling
to Nursing. In Rome in 1847 Sidney Herbert, a politician who had been Secretary of War
and who was on his honeymoon. He and Nightingale became lifelong close
friends Herbert would be Secretary of War again during the Crimean War when he
and his wife would also be instrumental in facilitating Nightingale's nursing work.
Nightingale continued her travels now with Charles and Selina Bracebridge
as far as Greece and Egypt while in Athens, Greece. Nightingale rescued a
juvenile little owl from a group of children who were tormenting it, she
named the owl Athena. Nightingale often carried the owl in her pocket until the
pet died soon before Nightingale left for Crimea.
At Thebes, she wrote of being "called to God", while a week later near Cairo she wrote in her diary
"God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation."
Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the
Crimean War which became her central focus. When reports got back to Britain about
the horrific conditions for the wounded. On the 21st of October 1854 she and the
staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, that she trained, including her aunt Mae Smith
and 15 Catholic nuns mobilised by Henry Edward Manning, were sent under the
authorisation of Sydney Herbert to the Ottoman Empire. Nightingale was assisted
in Paris by her friend Mary Clark they were deployed about 340 miles across the
Black Sea from Balaklava in the Crimea, where the main British camp was based.
After Nightingale sent a plea to the Times for a government solution to
the poor condition of the facilities, the British government commissioned Isambard Kingdom Brunel
To design a prefabricated hospital that could be built in England
and shipped out. The result was Renkoi Hospital, a civilian facility that,
which fell under the management of Dr. Edmund Alexander Parkes.
During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died there.
Ten times more soldiers died from llnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery
than from battle wounds. With overcrowding, defective sewers and lack of ventilation,
the Sanitary Commission had to be sent out by the British government to Scutari
in March 1855, almost six months after Nightingale had arrived.
The Commission flushed out the sewers and improved ventilation.
Death rates were sharply reduced, but she never claimed credit for helping to
reduce the death rate. Nightingale still believed that the death rates were due
to poor nutrition lack of supplies stale air and overworking of the soldiers.
After she returned to Britain and began collecting evidence before the Royal
Commission on the health of the army, she came to believe that most of the
soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions. During the
Crimean War, Nightingale gained the nickname of the lady with the lamp from
a phrase in a report in The Times. "She is a ministering angel without any
exaggeration in these hospitals, and has her slender form glides quietly along each
corridor every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of
her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and
darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick,
she may be observed alone with a little lamp in her hand
making her solitary rounds." In the Crimea on the 29th of November 1855 the
Nightingale fund was established for the training of nurses during a public
meeting to recognise Nightingale for her work in the war. There was an outpouring
of generous donations. Sidney Herbert served as honorary secretary to the
fund and the Duke of Cambridge was chairman. Nightingale was considered a
pioneer in the concept of medical tourism as well based on her 1856
letters describing spas in the Ottoman Empire. She detailed the health
conditions physical descriptions dietary information and other vital details of
patients whom she directed there. Nightingale had 45,000 pound's at her
disposal from the nightingale fund to set up the Nightingale training school
at School at St Thomas' Hospital on 9 July 1860. the first trained Nightingale
nurses began work on the 16th of May 1865 at the Liverpool workhouse
infirmary now called the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and
Midwifery. The school is part of King's College London. In the 1870s Nightingale
mentored Linda Richards, "America's first trained nurse", and enabled her to return
to the United States with adequate training and knowledge to
establish high quality nursing schools. Richard's went on to become a nursing
pioneer in the US and Japan. By 1882 several Nightingale nurses have
become matrons at several leading hospitals including in London St. Mary's
Hospital Westminster and others across Britain and the world. In 1883
Nightingale became the first recipient of the Royal Red Cross in 1904 she was
appointed a Lady of Grace of the order of St. John and in 1907 she became the
first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. The following year she was given
the honorary Freedom of the City of London, her birthday is now celebrated as
international CFS Awareness Day. Although much of Nightingale's work improved the
lots of women everywhere, Nightingale was of the opinion that women craved sympathy
and were not as capable as men. She criticised early women's rights
activists for decrying an alleged lack of careers for women at the same time
that lucrative medical positions under the supervision of Nightingale and
others went perpetually unfilled. She preferred the friendship of powerful men
insisting they had done more than women to help her attain her goals, writing: "I have never
found one woman who has altered her life by one iota for me or my opinions."
Florence Nightingale died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street,
Mayfair London the 13th of August 1910 at the age of 90. The offer of burial in
Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives and she's buried in the
graveyard at St Margaret's Church in East Wellow, Hampshire, near Embley Park.
She left a large body of work, including several hundred notes that were
previously unpublished. A memorial monument to Nightingale was created in
Carrara marble by Francis William Sargant in 1913 and placed in
the cloister of the Basilica of Santa Croce, in Florence, Italy. Nightingale's lasting
contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession
she set an example of compassion commitment to patient care and diligent
and thoughtful hospital administration. Her achievements are all the more
impressive when they are considered against the background of social
restraints on women in Victoria England. She was also a pioneer in data
visualisation with the use of infographics, effectively using graphical
presentations of statistical data. Her Crimean War achievements were
exaggerated by media at the time, but critics agree on the importance of her
later work in professionalising nursing roles for women. Florence was born to
nurse, it was her one sole aim in life to help and serve others, she became a hero
and saviour to many and will always be remembered as the lady with a lamp.
(Music)