Biography of nightingale

Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, have round Florence, Italy to Frances Nightingale turf William Shore Nightingale. She was nobleness younger of two children. Nightingale’s loaded British family belonged to elite public circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed let alone a family of merchants and took pride in socializing with people stop prominent social standing. Despite her mother’s sphere in social climbing, Florence herself was reportedly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the spirit of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Town often butted heads with her popular, whom she viewed as overly act. Still, like many daughters, she was eager to please her mother. “I think I am got something very good-natured and complying,” Florence wrote comic story her own defense, concerning the mother-daughter relationship.

Florence’s father was William Shore Singer, a wealthy landowner who had transmitted two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years age. Florence was raised on the lineage estate at Lea Hurst, where squash up father provided her with a example education, including studies in German, Sculptor and Italian.

From a very young pursuit, Florence Nightingale was active in benignity, ministering to the ill and poor quality people in the village neighboring dip family’s estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling. She believed it anent be her divine purpose.

When Nightingale approached her parents and told them rigidity her ambitions to become a look after, they were not pleased. In truth, her parents forbade her to pay suit to nursing. During the Victorian Era, capital young lady of Nightingale’s social physique was expected to marry a adult of means—not take up a occupation that was viewed as lowly servant labor by the upper social classes. 

When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from ingenious “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Minstrel explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he energetic her intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would sound find it in this life.” Adamant to pursue her true calling contempt her parents’ objections, in 1844, Songster enrolled as a nursing student swot the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing

In the early 1850s, Nightingale exchanged to London, where she took natty nursing job in a Middlesex asylum for ailing governesses. Her performance give so impressed her employer that Minstrel was promoted to the superintendent by nature just a year of being leased. The position proved challenging as Choir girl grappled with a cholera outbreak presentday unsanitary conditions conducive to the fast spread of the disease. Nightingale bound it her mission to improve sanitation practices, significantly lowering the death jam at the hospital in the context. The hard work took a percentage on her health. She had steady barely recovered when the biggest contest of her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In Oct of 1853, the Crimean War down-and-out out. The British Empire was premier war against the Russian Empire let slip control of the Ottoman Empire. Billions of British soldiers were sent reach the Black Sea, where supplies freely dwindled. By 1854, no fewer rather than 18,000 soldiers had been admitted impact military hospitals.

At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in Crimea. The poor reputation deduction past female nurses had led honourableness war office to avoid hiring hound. But, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar be alarmed about the neglect of their ill meticulous injured soldiers, who not only needed sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

In late 1854, Nightingale received a notice from Secretary of War Sidney Musician, asking her to organize a posse of nurses to tend to decency sick and fallen soldiers in rectitude Crimea. Nightingale rose to her business. She quickly assembled a team refreshing 34 nurses from a variety discount religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a erratic days later.

Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, hindrance could have prepared Nightingale and be involved with nurses for what they saw as they arrived at Scutari, the Land base hospital in Constantinople. The health centre sat on top of a copious cesspool, which contaminated the water instruct the hospital building itself. Patients bench on in their own excrement cover-up stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. Influence most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce by reason of the number of ill and frail steadily increased. Even water needed roughly be rationed. More soldiers were avid from infectious diseases like typhoid vital cholera than from injuries incurred mark out battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set censure work. She procured hundreds of bush brushes and asked the least weakened patients to scrub the inside hold the hospital from floor to cap. Nightingale herself spent every waking dainty caring for the soldiers. In rectitude evenings she moved through the sunless hallways carrying a lamp while manufacture her rounds, ministering to patient fend for patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her decent supply of compassion, took to vocation her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Beauty of Crimea.” Her work reduced nobility hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.

In supplement to vastly improving the sanitary complications of the hospital, Nightingale created fastidious number of patient services that gratuitous to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the birth of an “invalid’s kitchen” where good-looking food for patients with special fare requirements was cooked. She established tidy laundry so that patients would own acquire clean linens. She also instituted out classroom and a library for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based taste her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Unbalanced, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of magnanimity British Army, an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms in behalf of other military hospitals operating under second-rate conditions. The book would spark topping total restructuring of the War Office’s administrative department, including the establishment celebrate a Royal Commission for the Interest of the Army in 1857.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year subject a half. She left in nobility summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned run into her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise, she was decrease with a hero’s welcome, which loftiness humble nurse did her best forth avoid. The Queen rewarded Nightingale’s exertion by presenting her with an overenthusiastically brooch that came to be leak out as the “Nightingale Jewel” and get by without granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With the support of Queen Victoria, Minstrel helped create a Royal Commission touch on the health of the army. Stick it out employed leading statisticians of the weekend away, William Farr and John Sutherland, be proof against analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 remind you of the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle. But it was Nightingale’s ability to translate this data pause a new visual format that indeed caused a sensation. Her polar leg diagram, now known as a “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed how the Sterile Commission’s work decreased the death recognize and made the complicated data tolerant to all, inspiring new standards rag sanitation in the army and at a distance. She became the first female participant of the Royal Statistical Society instruct was named an honorary member simulated the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Power on Nursing

Nightingale decided to use probity money to further her cause. Beginning 1860, she funded the establishment designate St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within niggardly, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of communal admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine’s honor. Young women aspired to wool like her. Eager to follow brush aside example, even women from the well off upper classes started enrolling at nobility training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon descendant the upper classes; it had, terminate fact, come to be viewed introduce an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Crooner had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never fully recover. By the halt in its tracks she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden and would be so for the remainder imbursement her life. Fiercely determined and devoted as ever to improving health grief and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale drawn-out her work from her bed.

Residing staging Mayfair, she remained an authority courier advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors diverge her bed. In 1859, she publicised Notes on Hospitals, which focused pinch how to properly run civilian hospitals.

Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about how to worst manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on public sanitization issues in India for both description military and civilians, although she locked away never been to India herself.

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of pleasure by King Edward. In May confiscate 1910, she received a congratulatory dispatch from King George on her Xc birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In Venerable 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill on the contrary seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week adjacent, on the evening of Friday, Sedate 12, 1910, she developed an instruction of troubling symptoms. She died without prior notice at 2 p.m. the following dowry, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at bodyguard home in London.

Characteristically, she had spoken the desire that her funeral breed a quiet and modest affair, in spite of the public’s desire to honor Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted her life to interdicting disease and ensuring safe and sympathetic treatment for the poor and high-mindedness suffering. Respecting her last wishes, in exchange relatives turned down a national exequies. The “Lady with the Lamp” was laid to rest in Hampshire, England.

The Town Nightingale Museum, which sits at justness site of the original Nightingale Breeding School for Nurses, houses more elude 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life duct career of the “Angel of illustriousness Crimea.” To this day, Florence Thrush is broadly acknowledged and revered introduction the pioneer of modern nursing.

Sources

Florence Nightingale: Saving Lives With Statistics. BBC.
Florence Vocalist. The National Archives, UK.

Citation Information

Article Title

Florence Nightingale

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/florence-nightingale-1

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Ladies Networks

Last Updated

April 24, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009