Florence Nightingale

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Standard Name: Nightingale, Florence
Birth Name: Florence Nightingale
Nickname: Flo
Nickname: The Lady-in-Chief
Nickname: The Lady of the Lamp
Nickname: Commander-in-Chief
Nickname: Wild Ass of the Wilderness
FN 's fame began when she headed nurses in the Crimean war. After the war, she worked to reform health care and promoted sanitation at home and abroad. To this end she composed speeches, government reports, statistical analyses, articles, and pamphlets. She travelled extensively in her youth, producing many letters which were later collected and published. She also wrote theology, including the work which contains her feminist fragment Cassandra. Although FN was a versatile, political, and prolific writer (she produced over two hundred literary works during her career), she is remembered almost solely for her nursing work.
Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 166. Gale Research, 1996.
166: 268
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of the young Florence Nightingale. She is wearing a simple black dress with lace collar and lace cap, and looking directly into the camera.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Kate Marsden
KM 's decision to become a nurse was inspired by her own interests and her family's financial insecurity. In early 1877, she began to study and work at the Deaconesses' Institution and Training Hospital at...
Education Penelope Shuttle
Some sources say that PS attended a secondary modern school in Staines (that is one with non-academic aims and expectations). But attendance at a private school is strongly implied by her poem about a girls'...
Family and Intimate relationships Caroline Clive
In a letter Florence Nightingale wrote of CC : She is now married and has two children and I never saw happiness so stamped on any human creature's face. I liked her exceedingly and admire...
Family and Intimate relationships Arthur Hugh Clough
In 1853, AHC married Blanche Smith , a cousin of Florence Nightingale .
Family and Intimate relationships Julia Ward Howe
JWH 's second daughter, Florence , was born, and was named after Florence Nightingale , the remarkable young woman whom the Howes had met while on honeymoon in Europe.
Clifford, Deborah Pickman. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. Little, Brown and Co., 1978.
86
Howe, Julia Ward. Reminiscences, 1819–1899. Houghton Mifflin, 1899.
136
Family and Intimate relationships Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Her first cousins included Florence Nightingale , Hilary Bonham-Carter , and the future Mrs Arthur CloughArthur Hugh Clough . Because of their illegitimate origins, however, the Smith children were not acknowledged by the Nightingales, and BLSB only...
Family and Intimate relationships Eleanor Rathbone
ER 's father was the sixth William Rathbone in a Lancashire family which was Quaker , Unitarian , Liberal and philanthropic. For six generations this family had been the epitome of fair trading, plain speaking...
Family and Intimate relationships Florence Farr
FF 's father, William Farr , was a successful doctor, medical statistician, and reformer. He lectured and published on the subject of hygiene, which he preferred to call hygiology. Bernard Shaw describes him as...
Family and Intimate relationships Emma Caroline Wood
ECW once rescued Evelyn while he was serving in the Crimean War. He was afflicted by typhoid fever when she insisted on visiting him in a hospital. Florence Nightingale , who ran the hospital, said...
Friends, Associates Julia Wedgwood
JW and her sister Euphemia were close to Meta and Marianne Gaskell . Another friend of JW was Florence Nightingale .
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
219
Wedgwood, Barbara, and Hensleigh Wedgwood. The Wedgwood Circle, 1730-1897: Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends. Studio Vista, 1980.
258
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
HM and Florence Nightingale became correspondents in the 1860s, on matters such as nursing.
Martineau, Harriet. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Selected Letters, edited by Valerie Sanders, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. vii - xxxiii, 235.
xxi
Friends, Associates Frances Isabella Duberly
FIDmade friends with almost all hands of the Shooting Star, on which she sailed to the Crimea, and they gathered to cheer her as she left the ship at Varna.
Duberly, Frances Isabella. Mrs Duberly’s War. Journals and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6. Kelly, ChristineEditor , Oxford University Press, 2007.
19
(She also mentions...
Friends, Associates Ann Bridge
As a small girl AB met Florence Nightingale , whom she remembered as a very old lady, with a ravaged, majestically intelligent face. . . . the hand that writes these words has touched the...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Barrett Browning
During their visits to London, the Brownings socialised with such prominent figures as John Ruskin , Jane and Thomas Carlyle , Alfred Tennyson , Dante Gabriel and William Michael Rossetti , and Charles Kingsley ....
Friends, Associates Felicia Skene
From her youth FS was accustomed to mixing with distinguished people. Sir Walter Scott , a friend of both of her parents, found her youthful company a relief when he was old and ill. In...

Timeline

1825
Frances Parkes (Mrs. William Parkes 1786-1842), published a highly successful domesticconduct book whose lengthy title begins Domestic Duties; or, Instructions to Young Married Ladies.
1840
The Society of Protestant Sisters of Charity (Nursing Sisters) was founded as a secular nursing order in London, inspired by Quaker Elizabeth Gurney Fry .
September 1854
The British landed in Crimea, unopposed by the Russians they had come to make war with. They went on to lay siege to Sebastopol that October and to win important victories at Balaklava (25...
12 October 1854
W. H. Russell began reporting in The Times on army medical service in the Crimean War, specifically on the confusion, mismanagement, and maladministration which he saw at the scene of action.
Cohen, Emmeline W. The Growth of the British Civil Service 1780-1939. Archon Books, 1965.
110
30 January 1855
Public outrage against Lord Raglan , who commanded Britain's forces in the Crimean War, culminated in a Parliament ary inquiry that brought down Lord Aberdeen 's government and enabled various reforms.
By mid-April 1856
Frances Margaret Taylor published as a Lady VolunteerEastern Hospitals and English Nurses: the Narrative of Twelve Months' Experience in the Hospitals of Koulali and Scutari.
British Library Catalogue.
1 August 1863
Queen Victoria , in a letter to The Ladies of England, denounced the crinoline, calling it an indelicate, expensive, dangerous, and hideous article.
August 1863
The Times argued for the regulation for prostitutes.
24 October 1868
With the support of Lady Georgiana Fullerton , novelist and journalist Frances Margaret Taylor established, in rented rooms off Fleet Street, London, the religious community that would become the Congregation of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God
31 December 1869
The Daily News published the Ladies' Protest, a document signed by 124 women which outlined their arguments for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.
1876-1878
More than six million people died from drought, famine, and disease during a major famine in India.
January 1877
A meeting between Emma Robarts and Lady Kinnaird resulted in the decision to merge the Prayer Circles or Unions started by the former with the Nurses' Home organized by the latter; the union became the...
May 1893
The Royal British Nurses' Association , which added the word Royal to its name in 1891, became the first association of professional women to be granted a charter of incorporation; however, they were not granted...
5 January 1907
Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (who died of bronchitis on 30 December 1906) became the last person laid to rest at Westminster Abbey.