Nightingale, Florence

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NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE

NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE (1820–1910), British nurse.

Born in Florence, Italy, on 12 May 1820, Florence Nightingale would become one of the world's most recognized women during her lifetime and a cultural icon after her death. The second child of William Edward and Frances Nightingale, she was raised in the Church of England to satisfy her mother's social and political ambitions, although the family was Unitarian by descent. Educated at home by her father, Nightingale excelled at academic subjects, preferring Greek and Latin to the domestic arts encouraged for women. After much persuasion, Nightingale's father allowed her an annual maintenance of £50, enabling her financial security.

Greatly admired and expected to make a good match, Nightingale refused the marriage proposal of Richard Monckton Milnes (1809–1885) despite their shared status and social values. Her refusal illustrates the conflicts shared by many intellectual women during the Victorian era: Nightingale explained that Milnes would satisfy her intellectual and passionate nature, but that her "moral …active nature … requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in his life" (Woodham-Smith, p. 51).

Nightingale believed herself to be called from God to perform active service—not service through

a husband. Occurring at pivotal moments in her life, Nightingale believed these experiences to be much like those of Joan of Arc (c. 1412–1431). First "called" in 1837 at seventeen, Nightingale believed God called her three subsequent times—in 1853 (prior to working at the Hospital for Gentlewomen), in 1854 (before going to the Crimea), and again in 1861 (after the death of Sidney Herbert [1810–1861]).

Visiting the hospital and school for Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth, Germany, Nightingale recognized in nursing an answer to this call to service. Because nursing was considered a low and disreputable profession, Nightingale met with resistance to her desires to study and pursue this vocation, especially from her mother. In a letter to her cousin Hilary Bonham Carter (1821–1865), she detailed her plan, "I thought something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows, for women of educated feeling, might be established" (Cook, vol. 1, p. 44).

During this period of depression, Nightingale wrote the three-volume Suggestions For Thought to Searchers After Religious Truth (privately printed, 1860), which explored what she saw as a conflict between divine and secular values. Her semi-autobiographical treatise on women's lives, "Cassandra," is included in the second volume. In 1853, Nightingale received permission to study nursing at the Kaiserwerth School for three months. Upon her return, Nightingale became the superintendent at the Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness in London.

In 1854 Britain declared war on Russia; although England and its allies considered their Crimean engagement a military victory, the conflict exposed the appalling conditions of British military hospitals. At the request of Sidney Herbert, Minister at War, Nightingale traveled to Scutari, Turkey, with thirty-eight nurses to reform the military facilities. Nightingale quickly won the respect of the wounded soldiers, who called her "the lady with the lamp."

Returning from the Crimea, Nightingale experienced recurring bouts of a disabling illness, often preventing her from walking. Nightingale continued, however, as an advocate for health reforms.

Her statistical research influenced reforms in hospital administration and design, including the pavilion model, as well as reforms in hygiene and health care for the poor. Stressing preventative care and patient comfort, Nightingale insisted upon fresh air and water, proper drainage, cleanliness, and light for hospital wards.

In 1860, she established the Nightingale Training School for Nurses and published Notes on Nursing. That same year, Nightingale was the first woman elected a fellow to the Statistical Society in recognition of her statistical analyses that contributed to the reduction of the mortality rate in military hospitals. In 1883 Nightingale received the Royal Red Cross from Queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901), and in 1907 Edward VII (r. 1901–1910) honored her with the Order of Merit, making Nightingale the first woman to receive this award.

While the Crimean war may have immortalized Nightingale, Lytton Strachey, in his biographical sketch of her, describes this experience as only "the fulcrum with which she hoped to move the world. … For more than a generation she was to sit in secret, working her lever: her real life began at the very moment when, in the popular imagination, [it] ended" (p. 158).

On 13 August 1910, Nightingale died. In respect to her wishes, Nightingale's family declined a national funeral and interment in Westminster Abbey, burying her instead beside family.

See alsoCrimean War; Nurses; Professions; Red Cross.