Pentecost: Ordinary Women: Florence Nightingale

A couple weeks ago, in this series, we met Clara Barton, one of the women who inspired me as a child. Another woman who fascinated me was Florence Nightingale. Born to a life of privilege in England, she nonetheless become the ‘lady with the lamp’ during the Crimean War. Nightingale’s work formed the basis of nursing as we know it.  

Florence was born May 12, 1820 in Florence, Italy to William Edward and Frances Nightingale. Her father had only inherited his great-uncle’s estate and name (Nightingale) five years earlier. She was their second daughter. The family returned to England in 1821, where they lived at Embley Park in Hampshire, with a summer home at Lea Hurst in Derbyshire. As members of the aristocracy, they also spent the social season in London.

In an unusual move, her father taught her history, philosophy, literature, and mathematics. She was also fluent in French, German, Italian, Greek, and Latin, and even engaged in political discussions with her father.

Her religious upbringing was in the Church of England, although some sources list her as Unitarian. As a teenager, she felt called by God, noting in her diary, “On February 7th, 1837, God spoke to me and called me to his service." By 1844 she began to believe that her calling was nursing. During a tour of Egypt in 1850, she wrote, “I like Him to do exactly as He likes without even telling me the reason…Today I am thirty--the age Christ began his mission. Now no more childish things. No more love. No more marriage. Now Lord let me think only of Thy Will, what Thou willest me to do. Oh Lord Thy Will, Thy Will.”

For Florence, religion strengthened people to do good works and she encouraged her nurses to attend church calling them “handmaidens of the Lord”. She noted, “Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.” She also believed that “To be a fellow worker with God is the highest aspiration of which we can conceive man capable.”

Although her father encouraged her learning, the family was not as enthusiastic with her choice of nursing as a profession. Eventually she convinced them and enrolled in two weeks training at the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserswerth, Germany in July 1850. She returned a year later for 3 months. At the Institute she learned the nursing skills of the time and hospital organization.

Three years later, she was superintendent of the Institution for Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances in London. This hospital for governesses gave her a chance to hone her administrative skills and improve nursing care for the patients as well as conditions for the nurses themselves. 

When the Crimean War started between Russia and the Ottoman Turks in October of 1853, Britain and France entered the conflict as allies of Turkey. British journalist William Howard Russell reported that the wounded lacked supplies and that care was incompetent. Faced with public outcry, the British secretary of war Sidney Herbert, a family friend, wrote to Florence Nightingale asking her to take nurses to the hospitals at Sutari. Nightingale left England with 38 women on October 24, 1854. They arrived on November 5 and five days later casualties from the Battle of Balaklava (memorialized in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade*) and the Battle of Inkerman overwhelmed the hospitals. A measure of the catastrophic nature of the battles is that of the 600 soldiers in the Light Brigade alone, 127 were wounded and taken to the hospitals. Another 118 were killed and 60 taken prisoner. Less than 200 men still had horses at the end of that fateful, and misguided, attack.

There were, as Russell had reported, not enough supplies available. Nightingale bought equipment using monies provided by the London Times. Under Nightingale’s command, sanitary conditions were established. Soldiers’ wives were put to work doing laundry, while the nurses cleaned the wards. As Clara Barton did a few years later, the nurses wrote letters for the soldiers. Florence earned the title “Lady with the Lamp” by visiting the patients at night (as depicted in this lithograph of The Lady with the Lamp from 1891 by Henrietta Rae). Her work paid off with lower mortality rates. She returned to the Crimea several times, even after falling ill herself from conditions there. When the Treaty of Paris ended the conflict on March 30, 1856, she remained at Scutari until the hospitals closed. She was hailed as a heroine upon her return to England in August of 1856.

Nightingale continued to work on reforming healthcare and nursing after the war. At a meeting with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in September of 1856 she presented her records about the military hospitals, staffing and supply problems. This resulted in reform in the military medical systems. Faced though she was with death and pain, Nightingale said, “And she noted, "Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.”

In 1859 she began the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. By standardizing nursing training and procedures, Florence made nursing a respectable form of employment for women. She realized that women, “dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are theirs.” She had a vision herself of a world where women could follow their dreams.

She also published Notes on Nursing: What it Is and What it Is Not, which has been in continuous world-wide publication since 1859. Florence died in 1910 and is buried in the family plot at St. Margaret’s Church, East Wellow, Hampshire. The Episcopal Church has designated August 12 as her feast day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Throughout her life, Florence Nightingale lived out the Parable of the Grain of Mustard Seed. “He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.’” (Matthew 13:31-32) She even stated, “So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.” In the face of family, political, and military opposition Florence Nightingale planted a seed that blossomed into a new vision for nursing. Her work inspired women, and men, across the world to pursue that career. Her innovations in nursing were used during the American Civil War by other nurses like Clara Barton, and her legacy continues today.  

What 'mustard seed' idea do you have that you have never acted on? 

More info about Florence Nightingale:

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/nightingale-florence

http://satucket.com/lectionary/Florence_Nightingale.htm

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Florence-Nightingale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale 

https://everydaypowerblog.com/florence-nightingale-quotes/

*The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!