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The life of Florence Nightingale

The founder of modern nursing, and the lady with the lamp….

Discover how one remarkable woman changed the face of nursing forever in our Florence Nightingale facts…

Have you or your family ever been poorly and had to go to hospital? Did you notice all the hard work the nurses were doing to care for the patients and help them get better? 

Today, nurses are recognised as important , super-skilled professionals . But that hasn’t always been the case. Believe it or not, at the start of the 19th century, nurses usually had no training at all, and they weren’t even paid for the ‘menial’ work they did! But one woman changed all that… meet the amazing Florence Nightingale .

Florence Nightingale facts

Who was florence nightingale.

Born : 12 May 1820 in Florence, Italy Lived in : England, UK Occupation : Nurse Died : 13 August 1910 Best known for : Founding modern nursing Also known as : Lady with the Lamp

Florence Nightingale was born in the city of Florence, Italy , on 12 May 1820 whilst her parents were enjoying a long honeymoon. And yup, you guessed it – that’s how she got her name! Her parents were called William and Fanny Nightingale , and she had one older sister, too – Frances Parthenope , AKA ‘Pop’.

William Nightingale was a wealthy banker and was able to provide his family with a very privileged life. They had servants and two lovely houses – a winter home in Hampshire and a summer home in Derbyshire.

At the time that Florence was a youngster, most girls didn’t go to school – in fact, many didn’t receive any education at all! But William was keen for his daughters to learn, and gave them lessons in lots of different subjects, including science, history and maths.

What did Florence Nightingale do?

In Victorian Britain , wealthy women like Florence weren’t expected to work – their job was to marry and look after the home. Daily life was spent seeing to servants, entertaining guests, reading, sewing and attending social events. But Florence saw something very different for her future. When she was 16 years old, she believed she heard a voice from God calling for her to  carry out important work to help those suffering . She wanted to be a nurse.

When Florence broke the news to her parents, they weren’t too happy! Nursing was not a respectful profession and, what’s more, hospitals were filthy, horrible places where sick people died – certainly no place for wealthy girl like Florence! William tried hard to change his daughter’s mind, but Florence was determined. In 1851, he gave in, and allowed Florence to study nursing at a Christian school for women in Germany . There, she learned important skills in caring for patients and the importance of hospital cleanliness .

It wasn’t long before Florence put her new skills to the test. By 1853 she was running a women’s hospital in London, where she did a fantastic job improving the working conditions as well as patient care.

Did you know that we have a FREE downloadable Florence Nightingale primary resource? Great for teachers, homeschoolers and parents alike!

The Crimean War

In 1854, the Crimean War broke out – a war with Britain, France and Turkey on one side, and Russia on the the other. British troops went off to fight in the Crimea – an area in the south of Russia, now part of Ukraine. News soon reached home of soldiers dying from battle wounds, cold, hunger and sickness, with no real medical care or nurses to treat them. Help was needed fast, and the Minister for War – called Sidney Herbert – knew just the person… He asked Florence to lead a team of nurses to the Crimea!

When they arrived, the nurses found the Army hospital in Scutari (the area where wounded soldiers were sent) in a terrible state. It was overcrowded and filthy, with blocked drains, broken toilets and rats running everywhere. Imagine the smell! There weren’t enough medical supplies or equipment, and wounded soldiers had to sleep on the dirty floor, without blankets to keep warm, clean water to drink or fresh food to eat. Not surprisingly, disease spread quickly and most of the soldiers died from infection.

Florence Nightingale to the rescue!

Florence knew that the soldiers could only get well again if the hospital conditions improved. With funds from back home, she bought better medical equipment and decent food, and paid for workmen to clear the drains. And together with her team, she cleaned the wards , set up a hospital kitchen and provided the wounded soldiers with quality care – bathing them, dressing their wounds and feeding them. As a result of all the improvements, far fewer soldiers were dying from disease.

Why was Florence Nightingale the Lady with the Lamp?

Florence Nightingale truly cared for her suffering patients . At night, when everyone was sleeping, she’d   visit the soldiers to make sure they were comfortable. She’d also write letters home for those who could not write themselves. Since Florence carried a lantern with her on her night visits, the soldiers would call her ‘ The Lady with the Lamp’ .

Florence after the Crimean War

By the time Florence returned to England in 1856, she’d made quite a name for herself. After newspapers wrote about her work in the Crimea, people thought of her as a heroine. Queen Victoria wrote her a letter to say thank you for everything she had done. Cool, eh?

But Florence had no care for fame, and even though the war was over, there was still work to be done. She set about writing letters to important people telling them what was wrong with Army hospitals, and in September 1856 she met with Queen Victoria to discuss ways to improve military medical systems. Huge reform took place – the Army started to train doctors, hospitals became cleaner and soldiers were provided with better clothing, food and care. Go, Flo!

In 1860, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses opened at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. Not only did the school provide excellent nurse training, it made nursing a respectable career for women who wanted to work outside the home. 

How is Florence Nightingale remembered?

Florence suffered from illness for much of her later life, largely because of all her hard work helping sick people. In fact, during her final 40 years she spent many days confined to her bed. But she was greatly appreciated for everything she did for nursing, and for saving the lives of thousands of people . In 1907, Florence became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit , an award given by the queen for super-special work.

Sadly, Florence Nightingale died on 13 of August 1910, but she will forever be recognised as the founder of modern nursing.

What do you think of our Florence Nightingale facts? Leave a comment below and let us know!

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She is so kind and she helped all the soldiers by writing letters to their family

Florence nightingale was AWESOME!

Thanks for it I respect Florence Nightingale and for her work

I love her, she is so kind and loving

wow she just so cool i love her so much

it's so amazing

Thank you for all the facts. it was very amazing to find this facts.

Great information!!

She was a powerful, kind spirited individual. Amazing!

She was great

sooo cool I'm so inspired!

she was an amazing lady

I think that the information is really helpful and it helped me with my speech. Thank you

My mother was a nurse and simply adored this remarkable lady and also mother Theresa. And it is so important that we look back with pride of their extrodinary sacrifice over many years. Where are they today. God bless them both,

wow she is awsome

Florence Nightingale is wonderful indeed. She's amazing. I wish I can be good like her.

I love all the information!

What a great story!

Wow! That story was so inspiring!

amazing story

Very helpful in class, Thanks for the Help!

That story was amazing.I leaned lots.I'm exited to hear more intresting stories like this one.

I love Florence Nightingale!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very interesting!

She's amazing!

she sounds like a great woman

I love Florence!!!

That story was just amazing! I am impressed! I can't wait to hear some more ( olden day ) stories !

I think that they are very interesting and you know lots of facts because I learnt about Florence Nightingale and you still know more!

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Women Heroes

Florence nightingale.

The nurse who changed hospitals for the better

Florence Nightingale just wanted to help. As a young woman in England in the 1840s, she saw how hard it was for poor people to get help when they were sick. She wanted to be a nurse, but her rich parents thought that the job was beneath her, that she should instead marry a wealthy man. Defying what most women of her time would do, she went to Germany to study nursing.

Born on May 12, 1820, Nightingale was smart and observant. At her first job in the early 1850s, caring for sick teachers in London, England, she became superintendent after quickly showing her talent for helping the sick get better. It was also when she developed ideas that would change healthcare forever.

The mostly male doctors of the day focused on treating the diseases patients came into the hospital with, and not necessarily on how the diseases spread. (The idea of germs spreading diseases hadn’t quite caught on yet.) But while volunteering at a hospital during a cholera outbreak, Nightingale noticed that people were catching and spreading diseases inside the hospital itself. It was then she realized that dirty conditions inside hospitals might be spreading diseases, and that if hospitals were cleaner, patients might be safer.

In 1853, England and France went to war with Russia in what is now Turkey , an event called the Crimean War. Nightingale was asked to lead a team of 38 nurses at the British military hospital in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). When she arrived, she was shocked to discover that more soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from battle wounds. Taking charge, she had the hospital scrubbed, then created diagrams and graphs to show that if hospitals were cleaner, fewer people would die. According to some sources, because of her efforts the hospital’s death rate dropped from about 40 percent to around 2 percent.

The “Lady With the Lamp”—soldiers’ nickname for her because of her habit of walking dark hallways to care for them—returned to England after the war ended in 1856. Two years later she became the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society for her use of graphs in healthcare, and in 1860 she founded the Nightingale Home and Training School for Nurses to properly train healthcare workers.

King George V sent Nightingale a personal birthday message on her 90 th birthday; she died a few months later on August 13, 1910 . But even today, doctors and nurses care for patients using the safe methods that she developed, making sure that those patients’ health only improves when they enter a hospital.

Read this next

Women's history month, the women's suffrage movement, african american heroes.

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Florence Nightingale facts for kids

Florence Nightingale , OM (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910), was an English nurse . She helped create the modern techniques of nursing . She became a leader of the team of nurses who helped wounded soldiers during the Crimean War .

Early years

The crimean war, school for nurses, studies of statistics and sanitations, personality, mary clarke, sidney herbert, interesting facts about florence nightingale, florence nightingale quotes, photographs, biographies, images for kids.

Florence Nightingale was born into an upper class British family in 1820 in Florence , Tuscany , Italy . She was named after the town where she was born. The family moved back to London when Florence was a young girl. She was a Unitarian . Although her parents expected her to become a wife and a mother, in 1845 she decided to become a nurse. While she was training she campaigned for better conditions for poor people in Britain.

Nightingale's father educated her. Florence and her older sister Parthenope studied history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature, and philosophy. From an early age Florence, who was the more academic of the two girls, showed an extraordinary ability for collecting and analysing data which she would use to great effect in later life.

Despite the anger and distress of her mother and sister, Nightingale rejected the expected role for a woman of her status to become a wife and mother. She worked hard to educate herself in the art and science of nursing, in the face of opposition from her family.

In 1850, she visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein in Germany, where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the sick and the deprived. She regarded the experience as a turning point in her life. She also received four months of medical training.

On 22 August 1853, Nightingale took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London, a position she held until October 1854. Her father had given her an annual income of £500 (roughly £40,000/US$65,000 in present terms), which allowed her to live comfortably and to pursue her career.

In 1854 to 1856, during the Crimean War, Florence was working in Harley Street in London. After reading many reports about the poor treatment of sick and injured soldiers, she travelled to Crimea to see for herself and discovered the hospitals were crowded and dirty.

She knew Sidney Herbert, who was Secretary of War during the Crimean War and he helped her. At the hospital in Istanbul where the injured soldiers were sent, Florence realized that soldiers died more often from diseases like cholera than from their injuries in war. She used her knowledge of maths and statistics to show the British government that providing better conditions for sick and injured soldiers would help them win the war. She was, however, quite wrong about how cholera spread.

While she was working in Crimea she became known as “The Lady with the Lamp” from a phrase in a report in The Times because she would walk around the hospital in the evening carrying a lamp and check on the soldiers:

She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as 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.

The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":

Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.

When she returned to England she started a school in 1860 for nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. The first trained Nightingale nurses began work on 16 May 1865 at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary. Now called the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, the school is part of King's College London .

In her lifetime she was concerned with spreading medical knowledge. Some of her books were written in simple English so that they could easily be understood by those with poor reading skills. In 1851, she issued The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, for the Practical Training of Deaconesses, etc. , her first published work.

She wrote her most important book Notes on Nursing (1859). The book served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools, though it was written specifically for the education of those nursing at home. Notes on Nursing also sold well to the general reading public and is considered a classic introduction to nursing. Nightingale spent the rest of her life promoting and organising the nursing profession.

She also was an early user of graphs and diagrams to display data .

Nightingale was helped to understand statistics by her country's leading expert on public statistics, William Farr . He was a founder of medical statistics, and epidemiology . Farr worked with her on all the statistics from the Crimean War , which she publicised in her writing. She proved that more men had died from disease than fighting, a very important piece of information. The disease in question was mostly cholera . Cholera is caused by a bacterium spread by people drinking water contaminated by sewage . Unfortunately, both she and Farr believed the disease was caused by foul air: this was called the miasma theory.

The miasma theory was refuted by John Snow , who discovered the real cause of an outbreak in London. The cause was foul water from a water pump in Broad Street, London. Snow's work was published in 1855, but it was 30 years before the germ theory was generally accepted. Farr publicly acknowledged he was wrong in 1866, but Nightingale never really gave up the miasma idea. London's cholera epidemics stopped once the authorities built sewage treatment plants, delivered cleaner water, and built a system of underground pipes that kept sewage from seeping into the water supply.

She was concerned by the health of the British Army in India . Bad drainage, contaminated water, overcrowding, and poor ventilation were causing the high death rate among soldiers. Nightingale campained to improve the sanitary conditions not only in the army, but in the country as a whole. "After 10 years of sanitary reform, in 1873, Nightingale reported that mortality among the soldiers in India had declined from 69 to 18 per 1,000".

Florence Nightingale died in her room peace fully in her sleep from heart attack in 1910 in London. She is buried in the churchyard of St Margaret's Church in East Wellow, Hampshire, near Embley Park with a memorial with just her initials and dates of birth and death. 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.

Florence Nightingale was a wonderful woman who fought the odds of not living a life expected by her family. Florence Nightingale came from a wealthy family, but she refused the aristocrat lifestyle her family expected from her and instead focused on helping the poor, the injured, and the sick.

As a young woman, Nightingale was described as attractive, slender, and graceful. 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. Nightingale also much later had strong relations with academic Benjamin Jowett , who may have wanted to marry her.

She was a keen Christian but also believed that pagan and eastern religions also contained genuine worth. She was a strong opponent of discrimination against all types of Christians as well as against non-Christians. Nightingale believed religion helped provide people with the fortitude for arduous good work.

Friendships

In 1838, her father took the family on a tour in Europe where she was introduced to the English-born Parisian hostess Mary Clarke. Florence generally rejected female company and spent her time with male intellectuals. Clarke made an exception. She and Florence were to remain close friends for 40 years despite their 27-year age difference. Clarke demonstrated that women could be equals to men.

In Rome in 1847, she met Sidney Herbert, a politician who had been Secretary at War (1845–1846). He and Nightingale became lifelong close friends.

Herbert became Secretary of War again during the Crimean War . He and his wife were instrumental in facilitating Nightingale's nursing work in Crimea. She became Herbert's key adviser throughout his political career.

• In 1907, Florence Nightingale became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit , one of the highest honours awarded by the British monarch, by King Edward VII .
• 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 (LGStJ) .
• As a nurse she was given the name 'The Lady with the Lamp' because at night, she checked on the wounded soldiers and always carried 'The Lamp' with her.
• She helped make modern nursing possible.
• As a youth, Nightingale traveled to Greece and Egypt.
• While in Athens, Greece, Nightingale rescued a little owl from a group of children who were tormenting it, and she named the owl Athena. Nightingale often carried the owl in her pocket, until the pet died (soon before Nightingale left for Crimea).
• Nightingale was a prodigious and versatile writer, and lived to be 90 years old.
• There is a syndrome named after her called "Florence Nightingale Syndrome". It occurs when a soldier falls in love with a nurse.
• There are many statues of her in Britain, including one in Waterloo Place in London and a Florence Nightingale museum, also in London.
• Four hospitals in Istanbul are named after Nightingale: Florence Nightingale Hospital in Şişli (the biggest private hospital in Turkey), Metropolitan Florence Nightingale Hospital in Gayrettepe, European Florence Nightingale Hospital in Mecidiyeköy, and Kızıltoprak Florence Nightingale Hospital in Kadıköy , all belonging to the Turkish Cardiology Foundation.
• In 2002, Nightingale was ranked number 52 in the BBC 's list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.
• In 2006, the Japanese public ranked Nightingale number 17 in The Top 100 Historical Persons in Japan.
• Several churches in the Anglican Communion commemorate Nightingale with a feast day on their liturgical calendars.
• The US Navy ship the USS  Florence Nightingale  (AP-70) was commissioned in 1942.
• In 1981, the asteroid 3122 Florence was named after her.
• Nightingale has appeared on international postage stamps, including, the UK, Alderney, Australia, Belgium, Dominica, Hungary (showing the Florence Nightingale medal awarded by the International Red Cross), and Germany.
• “Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.”
• “Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.”
• “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”

Florence Nightingale's voice was saved for posterity in a phonograph recording from 1890 preserved in the British Library Sound Archive. The recording, made in aid of the Light Brigade Relief Fund and available to hear online, says:

When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore. Florence Nightingale.

The first theatrical representation of Nightingale was Reginald Berkeley's The Lady with the Lamp , premiering in London in 1929 with Edith Evans in the title role. It was adapted as a film of the same name in 1951. In 2009, a stage musical play representation of Nightingale entitled The Voyage of the Lass was produced by the Association of Nursing Service Administrators of the Philippines .

In 1912, a biographical silent film titled The Victoria Cross , starring Julia Swayne Gordon as Nightingale, was released, followed in 1915 by another silent film, Florence Nightingale , featuring Elisabeth Risdon. In 1936, Kay Francis played Nightingale in the film titled The White Angel . In 1951, The Lady with a Lamp starred Anna Neagle. In 1993, Nest Entertainment released an animated film Florence Nightingale , describing her service as a nurse in the Crimean War.

Nightingale was portrayed on television in the BBC's 2008 Florence Nightingale and 4's 2006 Mary Seacole : The Real Angel of the Crimea .

Other portrayals include:

• Laura Morgan in Victoria episode #3.4 "Foreign Bodies" (2018)
• Kate Isitt in the Magic Grandad episode "Famous People: Florence Nightingale" (1994)
• Jaclyn Smith in the TV biopic Florence Nightingale (1985)
• Emma Thompson in the ITV sketch comedy series Alfresco episode #1.2 (1983)
• Jayne Meadows in PBS series Meeting of Minds (1978)
• Janet Suzman in the British theatre-style biopic Miss Nightingale (1974)
• Julie Harris in Hallmark Hall of Fame episode #14.4 "The Holy Terror" (1965)
• Sarah Churchill in Hallmark Hall of Fame episode #1.6 "Florence Nightingale" (1952)

Florence Nightingale's image appeared on the reverse of £10 Series D banknotes issued by the Bank of England from 1975 until 1994. As well as a standing portrait, she was depicted on the notes in a field hospital, holding her lamp.

Prior to 2002, other than the female monarchs, she was the only woman whose image had ever adorned British paper currency.

Nightingale had a principled objection to having photographs taken or her portrait painted. An extremely rare photograph of her, taken at Embley on a visit to her family home in May 1858, was discovered in 2006 and is now at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London. A black-and-white photograph taken in about 1907 by Lizzie Caswall Smith at Nightingale's London home in South Street, Mayfair, was auctioned on 19 November 2008 by Dreweatts auction house in Newbury, Berkshire, England, for £5,500.

The first biography of Nightingale was published in England in 1855. In 1911, Edward Tyas Cook was authorised by Nightingale's executors to write the official life, published in two volumes in 1913. Nightingale was also the subject of one of Lytton Strachey 's four mercilessly provocative biographical essays, Eminent Victorians . Strachey regarded Nightingale as an intense, driven woman who was both personally intolerable and admirable in her achievements.

Cecil Woodham-Smith , like Strachey, relied heavily on Cook's Life in her 1950 biography, though she did have access to new family material preserved at Claydon. In 2008, Mark Bostridge published a major new life of Nightingale, almost exclusively based on unpublished material from the Verney Collections at Claydon and from archival documents from about 200 archives around the world, some of which had been published by Lynn McDonald in her projected sixteen-volume edition of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2001 to date).

A tinted lithograph by William Simpson illustrating evacuation of the sick and injured from Balaklava

Picture of Nightingale in The Illustrated London News , 24 February 1855

A ward of the hospital at Scutari where Nightingale worked, from an 1856 lithograph by William Simpson

Nightingale's moccasins that she wore in the Crimean War (the other items are not hers)

Florence Nightingale exhibit at Malvern Museum , England, 2010

Nightingale's medals displayed in the National Army Museum

Memorial to Nightingale, Church of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy

A print of the jewel awarded to Nightingale by Queen Victoria , for her services to the soldiers in the war

Letter from Nightingale to Mary Mohl, 1881

Florence Nightingale, an angel of mercy . Scutari hospital 1855.

The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari (Jerry Barrett, 1857)

The Lady with the Lamp . Popular lithograph reproduction of a painting of Nightingale by Henrietta Rae , 1891.

Nightingale, c. 1858, by Goodman

Illustration in Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit . Nurse Sarah Gamp (left) became a stereotype of untrained and incompetent nurses of the early Victorian era, before the reforms of Nightingale

Florence Nightingale (middle) in 1886 with her graduating class of nurses from St Thomas' outside Claydon House , Buckinghamshire

Florence Nightingale by Charles Staal, engraved by G. H. Mote, used in Mary Cowden Clarke 's Florence Nightingale (1857)

The grave of Florence Nightingale in the churchyard of St Margaret's Church, East Wellow, Hampshire

" Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East " by Florence Nightingale

Blue plaque for Nightingale in South Street, Mayfair, London

The Nightingale Pledge

Statue of Nightingale by Arthur George Walker in Waterloo Place, London

Florence Nightingale Statue, London Road, Derby

Florence Nightingale stained glass window, originally at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary Chapel and now removed to St Peter's Church, Derby and rededicated 9 October 2010

Bust of Nightingale unveiled at Gun Hill Park in Aldershot in 2021

KLM MD-11, registration PH-KCD, Florence Nightingale

• This page was last modified on 25 December 2023, at 04:05. Suggest an edit .

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Florence Nightingale

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), known as “The Lady With the Lamp,” was a British nurse, social reformer and statistician best known as the founder of modern nursing. Her experiences as a nurse during the Crimean War were foundational in her views about sanitation. She established St. Thomas’s Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860. Her efforts to reform healthcare greatly influenced the quality of care in the 19 and 20 centuries.

Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy to Frances Nightingale and William Shore Nightingale. She was the younger of two children. Nightingale’s affluent British family belonged to elite social circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed from a family of merchants and took pride in socializing with people of prominent social standing. Despite her mother’s interest in social climbing, Florence herself was reportedly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the center of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Florence often butted heads with her mother, whom she viewed as overly controlling. Still, like many daughters, she was eager to please her mother. “I think I am got something more good-natured and complying,” Florence wrote in her own defense, concerning the mother-daughter relationship.

Florence’s father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy landowner who had inherited two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years old. Florence was raised on the family estate at Lea Hurst, where her father provided her with a classical education, including studies in German, French and Italian.

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

When Nightingale approached her parents and told them about her ambitions to become a nurse, they were not pleased. In fact, her parents forbade her to pursue nursing. During the Victorian Era , a young lady of Nightingale’s social stature was expected to marry a man of means—not take up a job that was viewed as lowly menial labor by the upper social classes. 

When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from a “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Nightingale explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he stimulated her intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in this life.” Determined to pursue her true calling despite her parents’ objections, in 1844, Nightingale enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing

In the early 1850s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex hospital for ailing governesses. Her performance there so impressed her employer that Nightingale was promoted to the superintendent within just a year of being hired. The position proved challenging as Nightingale grappled with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary conditions conducive to the rapid spread of the disease. Nightingale made it her mission to improve hygiene practices, significantly lowering the death rate at the hospital in the process. The hard work took a toll on her health. She had just barely recovered when the biggest challenge of her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. The British Empire was at war against the Russian Empire for control of the Ottoman Empire . Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where supplies quickly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into military hospitals.

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

In late 1854, Nightingale received a letter from Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, asking her to organize a corps of nurses to tend to the sick and fallen soldiers in the Crimea. Nightingale rose to her calling. She quickly assembled a team of 34 nurses from a variety of religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a few days later.

Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, nothing could have prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw when they arrived at Scutari, the British base hospital in Constantinople . The hospital sat on top of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water and the hospital building itself. Patients lay on in their own excrement on stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set to work. She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the inside of the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent every waking minute caring for the soldiers. In the evenings she moved through the dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministering to patient after patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her endless supply of compassion, took to calling her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Angel of Crimea.” Her work reduced the hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.

In addition to vastly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospital , Nightingale created a number of patient services that contributed to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the creation of an “invalid’s kitchen” where appealing food for patients with special dietary requirements was cooked. She established a laundry so that patients would have clean linens. She also instituted a classroom and a library for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based on her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army , an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms for other military hospitals operating under poor conditions. The book would spark a total restructuring of the War Office’s administrative department, including the establishment of a Royal Commission for the Health of the Army in 1857.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise, she was met with a hero’s welcome, which the humble nurse did her best to avoid. The Queen rewarded Nightingale’s work by presenting her with an engraved brooch that came to be known as the “Nightingale Jewel” and by granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With the support of Queen Victoria , Nightingale helped create a Royal Commission into the health of the army. It employed leading statisticians of the day, William Farr and John Sutherland, to analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 of the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle. But it was Nightingale’s ability to translate this data into a new visual format that really caused a sensation. Her polar area diagram, now known as a “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed how the Sanitary Commission’s work decreased the death rate and made the complicated data accessible to all, inspiring new standards for sanitation in the army and beyond. She became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and was named an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Nursing

Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In 1860, she funded the establishment of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within it, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of public admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine’s honor. Young women aspired to be like her. Eager to follow her example, even women from the wealthy upper classes started enrolling at the training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon by the upper classes; it had, in fact, come to be viewed as an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never fully recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden and would be so for the remainder of her life. Fiercely determined and dedicated as ever to improving health care and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale continued her work from her bed.

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

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

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of honor by King Edward. In May of 1910, she received a congratulatory message from King George on her 90th birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In August 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill but seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week later, on the evening of Friday, August 12, 1910, she developed an array of troubling symptoms. She died unexpectedly at 2 p.m. the following day, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at her home in London.

Characteristically, she had expressed the desire that her funeral be a quiet and modest affair, despite the public’s desire to honor Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted her life to preventing disease and ensuring safe and compassionate treatment for the poor and the suffering. Respecting her last wishes, her relatives turned down a national funeral. The “Lady with the Lamp” was laid to rest in Hampshire, England.

The Florence Nightingale Museum, which sits at the site of the original Nightingale Training School for Nurses, houses more than 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life and career of the “Angel of the Crimea.” To this day, Florence Nightingale is broadly acknowledged and revered as the pioneer of modern nursing.

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

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• World Biography

Florence Nightingale Biography

Born: May 12, 1820 Florence, Italy Died: August 13, 1910 London, England English nurse

The English nurse Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing and made outstanding contributions to the knowledge and improvement of public health.

Early years and study

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820; she was named after the city of her birth. Her father, William E. Nightingale, was a wealthy landowner who had inherited an estate in Derbyshire, England. Like many members of the wealthy class, he and Florence's mother, Fanny, dedicated themselves to the pursuit of active social lives. Florence and her sister, Parthenope, were tutored by their father in languages, mathematics, and history. Though Florence was tempted by the idea of a brilliant social life and marriage, she also wanted to achieve independence, importance in some field of activity, and obedience to God through service to society.

In 1844 Nightingale decided that she wanted to work in hospitals. Her family objected strongly to her plan; hospital conditions at that time were known to be terrible, and nurses were untrained and thought to be of questionable morals. Ignoring all resistance, Nightingale managed to visit some hospitals and health facilities. She then received permission from her parents to spend a few months at Kaiserworth, a German training school for nurses and female teachers. In 1853 she became superintendent of the London charity-supported Institution for Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances. This opportunity allowed her to become independent from her family and also to try out new ideas in organizing and managing an institution, conducted in a scientific, nonreligious setting.

War efforts

In October of 1854 Nightingale organized a party of thirty-eight nurses, mostly from different religious orders, for service in the Crimean War (1853–56), in which Great Britain, France, and Sardinia fought against Russian expansion in Europe. The nurses arrived at Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in November. Conditions at the British base hospital at Scutari (now Uskudar, Turkey) were awful and grew steadily worse as the number of sick and wounded soldiers rapidly increased. The British army did not have enough medical services and used what it did have poorly—a confusing and complicated supply system actually cut off deliveries to the patients. The Barrack Hospital, where Nightingale and her nurses worked and lived, was built on a massive cesspool (an underground area into which liquid waste flows), which poisoned the water and even the building itself. The general attitude was that the common soldier was a drunken brute on whom all comforts would be wasted.

Hospital reform efforts back home

Florence Nightingale left Scutari in the summer of 1856, soon after the war ended. By then she was famous among the troops and the public as the "Lady with the Lamp" and the "Nightingale in the East." This popular image is not quite accurate. Although she did some active nursing in the wards, Nightingale's real work lay outside the expression of tenderness and concern. It began with her refusal to respond to public praise and with her use of her influence in high places, including with the queen, to fight for effective reform of the entire system of military hospitals and medical care.

In Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army (1857) Nightingale used the experiences of the war to prove that a new system was necessary. Within five years this effort led to the reconstruction of the administrative structure of the War Office. Nightingale's Notes on Hospitals (1859) detailed the proper arrangements for civilian institutions (places that were not a part of the military). In the next year she presided over the founding of the Nightingale School for the training of nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, England. After 1858 she was recognized as the leading expert on military and civilian sanitation (the removal of water-transported waste) in India. She also believed that irrigation (the supplying of water to an area using artificial methods) was the solution to the problem of famine. In 1907 Nightingale was the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.

Later years

Nightingale's personality is well documented. She rebelled against the idle, sheltered existence of her family her entire life. She achieved a leading position in a world dominated by men, driving and directing her male coworkers as hard as she did herself. She often complained that women were selfish, and she had no time for the growing women's rights movement. But she also developed an idea of spiritual (relating to or affecting the spirit) motherhood and saw herself as the mother of the men of the British army—"my children"—whom she had saved. Florence Nightingale never really recovered from the physical strain of the Crimean War. After 1861 she rarely left her home and was confined to her bed much of the time. She died on August 13, 1910, in London, England.

For More Information

Dossey, Barbara Montgomery. Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer. Springhouse, PA: Springhouse Corp., 2000.

Small, Hugh. Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Vickers, Rebecca. Florence Nightingale. Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2000.

Wellman, Sam. Florence Nightingale: Lady with the Lamp. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 1999.

Woodham-Smith, Cecil. Florence Nightingale. New ed. London: Constable, 1996.

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Florence Nightingale

Often called “the Lady with the Lamp,” Florence Nightingale was a caring nurse and a leader. In addition to writing over 150 books, pamphlets and reports on health-related issues, she is also credited with creating one of the first versions of the pie chart. However, she is mostly known for making hospitals a cleaner and safer place to be.

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. Although her parents were from England, she was born in Italy while they were traveling. Both Florence and her older sister Parthenope were named after the Italian cities where they were born. When they returned to England in 1821, the Nightingale family lived in two homes. They had a summer home in Derbyshire called Lea Hurst , and a winter home in Hampshire called Embley. Growing up in a wealthy family, Florence Nightingale was homeschooled by her father and expected to get married at a young age. However, when she was a teenager, Nightingale believed she received a “calling” from God to help the poor and the sick.

Even though it was not a respected profession at the time, Nightingale told her parents that she wanted to become a nurse. Her parents did not approve of her decision and wanted her to get married and raise a family. Nightingale still wanted to be a nurse and refused marriage. Eventually, her father allowed her to go to Germany for three months to study at Pastor Theodore Fliedner’s hospital and school for Lutheran Deaconesses. After finishing her program in Germany, Nightingale went to Paris for extra training with the Sisters of Mercy. By the time she was 33, Nightingale was already making a name for herself in the nursing community. She returned to England in 1853 and became the superintendent and manager of a hospital for “gentlewomen” in London.

When the Crimean War began in 1854, the British were unprepared to deal with the number of sick and injured soldiers. The lack of medical supplies, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions caused many people to complain. Newspapers began to report about the terrible state of medical care. The Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert asked Nightingale to manage a group of nurses that would go treat the wounded soldiers. She agreed, and on November 4, 1854, Nightingale and 38 nurses arrived at the British camp outside of Constantinople. When they got there, the doctors were unwelcoming because they did not want to work with female nurses. However, as the number of patients increased, the doctors needed their help. The nurses brought supplies, nutritious food, cleanliness, and sanitation to the military hospital. They also provided individual care and support. Nightingale was known for carrying a lamp and checking on the soldiers at night, so they gave her the nickname “the Lady with the Lamp.” Within six months, Nightingale and her team transformed the hospital. The death rate went down from 40 percent to 2 percent because of their work.

When Nightingale returned from the war, she continued to improve the conditions of hospitals. She presented her experiences and her data to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1856. This data was the reason they formed a Royal Commission to improve the health of the British Army. Nightingale was so skilled with data and numbers that in 1858 she was also elected as the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society. In 1859, Nightingale continued to spread her healthier medical practices by helping to set up the Army Medical College in Chatham. That same year, she published a book called Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is Not . Her book gives advice on good patient care and safe hospital environments. As a result of her efforts during the war, a fund was set up for Nightingale to continue teaching nurses in England. In 1860, the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital was officially opened. In her later years, Nightingale was often bedridden from illness. However, she continued to advocate for safe nursing practices until her death.

Although Florence Nightingale died on August 13th, 1910 at the age of 90, her legacy continues. Two years after her death, the International Committee of the Red Cross created the Florence Nightingale Medal, that is given to excellent nurses every two years. Also, International Nurses Day has been celebrated on her birthday since 1965. In May of 2010, the Florence Nightingale Museum at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London reopened to honor the hundredth anniversary of Nightingale’s death.

Fee, Elizabeth, and Mary E Garofalo. “Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War.” American journal of public health vol. 100, no. 9 (2010): 1591. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.188607

Reynolds-Finley Historical Library. “The Life of Florence Nightingale.” The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Accessed May 1, 2018. https://library.uab.edu/locations/reynolds/collections/florence-nightingale/life

The Florence Nightingale Museum. “Florence Nightingale Biography.” Accessed May 3, 2018. https://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/resources/biography/?v=7516fd43adaa.

The National Archives. “Florence Nightingale.” September 05, 2018. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/florence-nightingale/.

Photograph:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/COPY_1_11_34_1866-e1402062188591.jpg

MLA - Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Florence Nightingale." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2019. Date accessed.

Chicago - Alexander, Kerri Lee. "Florence Nightingale." National Women's History Museum. 2019. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/florence-nightingale.

National Geographic Kids. “Florence Nightingale Facts for Kids.” April 26, 2018. https://www.natgeokids.com/za/discover/history/general-history/florence-nightingale/.

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Florence Nightingale OM, RRC ( 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910 ) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed “ The Lady with the Lamp ” after her habit of making rounds at night. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse.

Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St. Thomas Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King’s College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana at Bellosguardo in Florence, Italy , and was named after the city of her birth. Florence’s older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, Parthenopolis, a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples.

Her parents were William Edward Nightingale, born William Edward Shore (1794–1874) and Frances (“Fanny”) Nightingale née Smith (1789–1880). William’s mother Mary née Evans was the niece of one Peter Nightingale, under the terms of whose will William inherited his estate Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, and assumed the name and arms of Nightingale. Fanny’s father (Florence’s maternal grandfather) was the abolitionist and Unitarian William Smith.

Inspired by what she took as a call from God in February 1837 while at Embley Park, Florence announced her decision to enter nursing in 1844, despite the intense anger and distress of her mother and sister. In this, she rebelled against the expected role for a woman of her status, which was to become a wife and mother. Nightingale worked hard to educate herself in the art and science of nursing, in spite of opposition from her family and the restrictive societal code for affluent young English women. Nightingale was courted by politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing.

In Rome in 1847, she met Sidney Herbert, a brilliant politician who had been Secretary at War (1845–1846), a position he would hold again during the Crimean War. Herbert was on his honeymoon; he and Nightingale became lifelong close friends. Herbert and his wife were instrumental in facilitating Nightingale’s nursing work in the Crimea, and she became a key adviser to him in his political career, though she was accused by some of having hastened Herbert’s death from Bright’s Disease in 1861 because of the pressure her programme of reform placed on him.

Nightingale also much later had strong relations with Benjamin Jowett, who may have wanted to marry her.

Nightingale continued her travels (now with Charles and Selina Bracebridge) as far as Greece and Egypt . Her writings on Egypt in particular are testimony to her learning, literary skill and philosophy of life. Sailing up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel in January 1850, she wrote

“I don’t think I ever saw anything which affected me much more than this”. And, considering the temple: “Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering… not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man”.

At Thebes she wrote of being “called to God” while a week later near Cairo she wrote in her diary (as distinct from her far longer letters that her elder sister Parthenope was to print after her return): “God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation”. Later in 1850, she visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein in Germany , where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the sick and the deprived. She regarded the experience as a turning point in her life, and issued her findings anonymously in 1851; The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, for the Practical Training of Deaconesses, etc. was her first published work; she also received four months of medical training at the institute which formed the basis for her later care.

On 22 August 1853, Nightingale took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London, a position she held until October 1854. Her father had given her an annual income of £500 (roughly £40,000/US$65,000 in present terms), which allowed her to live comfortably and to pursue her career.

On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Park Lane. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire. She left a large body of work, including several hundred notes which were previously unpublished.

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Biography of Florence Nightingale, Nursing Pioneer

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Florence Nightingale (May 12, 1820–August 13, 1910), a nurse and social reformer, is considered the founder of the modern nursing profession who helped promote medical training and raise hygiene standards. She served as head nurse for the British during the Crimean War , where she was known as "The Lady With the Lamp" for her selfless service to sick and injured soldiers.

Fast Facts: Florence Nightingale

• Known For : Founder of modern nursing
• Also Known As : "The Lady With the Lamp," "The Angel of the Crimea"
• Born : May 12, 1820 in Florence, Italy
• Parents : William Edward Nightingale, Frances Nightingale
• Died : August 13, 1910 in London, England
• Published Work : Notes on Nursing
• Awards and Honors : British Order of Merit
• Notable Quotes : “Rather, 10 times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.”

Early Life 

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy, to a comfortably prosperous family. She was born while her parents, William Edward Nightingale and Frances Nightingale, were on an extended European honeymoon. (Her father changed his name from Shore to Nightingale after inheriting his great-uncle’s estate in 1815.)

The family returned to England the next year, dividing their time between a home in Derbyshire in central England and a grander estate in Hampshire in the south-central part of the country. She and her older sister Parthenope were educated by governesses and then by their father. She studied classical Greek and Latin and modern French, German, and Italian. She also studied history, grammar, and philosophy and received tutoring in  mathematics  when she was 20, after overcoming her parents' objections.

From a young age, Nightingale was active in philanthropy, working with the ill and poor in the nearby village. Then, on Feb. 7, 1837, Nightingale heard the voice of God, she later said, telling her she had a mission, though it took some years for her to identify that mission.

By 1844, Nightingale had chosen a different path from the social life and marriage expected by her parents. Again over their objections, she decided to work in nursing, at the time a less-than-respectable profession for women.

In 1849, Nightingale refused a marriage proposal from a "suitable" gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes, who had pursued her for years. She told him he stimulated her intellectually and romantically, but her "moral…active nature" called for something beyond a domestic life.

Nightingale enrolled as a nursing student in 1850 and 1851 at the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserswerth, Germany. She then worked briefly for a Sisters of Mercy hospital near Paris. Her views began to be respected. In 1853, she returned to England and took a nursing job at London's Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen. Her performance so impressed her employer that she was promoted to superintendent, an unpaid position.

Nightingale also volunteered at a Middlesex hospital, grappling with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary conditions that further spread the disease. She improved hygiene practices, significantly lowering the death rate at the hospital.

October 1853 marked the outbreak of the Crimean War, in which British and French forces fought the Russian Empire for control of Ottoman territory. Thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where supplies quickly dwindled. After the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar over the lack of medical attention and appallingly unsanitary conditions faced by the ill and injured soldiers.

At the urging of a family friend, Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, Nightingale volunteered to take a group of female nurses to Turkey. In 1854, 38 women, including Anglican and Roman Catholic sisters, accompanied her to the front. She reached the military hospital at Scutari, Turkey, on Nov. 5, 1854.

Deplorable Conditions

They had been warned of horrible conditions, but nothing could have prepared them for what they found. The hospital sat atop a cesspool, which contaminated the water and the building. Patients lay in their own excrement. Basic supplies such as bandages and soap were scarce. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases such as typhoid and cholera than from injuries sustained in battle.

Nightingale headed nursing efforts, improved sanitation, and ordered supplies using significant funds raised by the London Times , gradually winning over the military doctors.

She soon focused more on administration than on actual nursing, but she continued to visit the wards and to send letters home for the injured and ill soldiers. She insisted that she be the only woman in the wards at night, carrying a lamp as she made her rounds and earning the title "The Lady With the Lamp." The mortality rate at the hospital dropped from 60% at her arrival to 2% six months later.

Nightingale applied her education in mathematics to develop statistical analyses of disease and mortality, in the process popularizing the pie chart . She continued to fight the military bureaucracy and on March 16, 1856, she became general superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the Military Hospitals of the Army.

Return to England

Nightingale returned home in the summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved. She was surprised to find that she was a heroine in England, but she worked against public adulation. The previous year, Queen Victoria had awarded her an engraved brooch that became known as the "Nightingale Jewel" and a $250,000 grant, which she used in 1860 to fund the establishment of St. Thomas' Hospital, which included the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.

She wrote a massive report in 1857 analyzing her Crimean War experience and proposing reforms that sparked a restructuring of the War Office's administrative department, including the establishment of a Royal Commission for the Health of the Army. She also wrote "Notes on Nursing," the first textbook for modern nursing, in 1859.

While working in Turkey, Nightingale had contracted brucellosis, a bacterial infection also known as Crimean fever, and would never fully recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and routinely bedridden in London for the rest of her long life.

Working mostly from home, she founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses in London in 1860, using funds contributed by the public for her work in the Crimea. Nightingale collaborated with Elizabeth Blackwell , the first woman granted a medical degree in the United States, on starting the Woman's Medical College in their home country of England. The school opened in 1868 and operated for 31 years.

Nightingale was blind by 1901. In 1907 King Edward VII awarded her the Order of Merit, making her the first woman to receive that honor. She declined a national funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey, requesting that her grave be marked simply.

Her condition worsened In August 1910, but she seemed to recover and was in good spirits. On August 12, however, she developed a troubling array of symptoms and died around 2 p.m. the following day, August 13, at her home in London.

It's difficult to overstate the contributions that Florence Nightingale made to medicine, including her work on sanitation and hygiene and on organizational structures, and especially to nursing. Her fame encouraged many women to take up nursing, and her success in founding the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses and the Woman's Medical College opened the field to women around the world.

The Florence Nightingale Museum , at the site of the Nightingale Training School for Nurses, houses more than 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life and career of the "Angel of the Crimea" and "The Lady With the Lamp."

• " Florence Nightingale Biography ." Biography.com.
• " Florence Nightingale: British Nurse, Statistician, and Social Reformer ." Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Nightingale, Florence. "Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not." Dover Books on Biology, Paperback, 1 edition, Dover Publications, June 1, 1969.
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How Florence Nightingale’s Hygiene Crusade Saved Millions

Nightingale rebelled against her privileged background

The daughter of a wealthy landowner father and a mother descended from generations of merchants, Nightingale was born in Italy in 1820 while her parents were on an extended vacation. A smart but retiring girl, she shied away from her mother’s zeal for social status, including the expectation that Nightingale would marry a suitable man and settle down to raise a family.

She was well educated in the classics and showed an interest and aptitude in caring for the sick living near her family’s estate in Derbyshire. She was deeply spiritual and would later write about the “ divine calling ” from God that she experienced as a teen which inspired her decision to pursue nursing. Her parents were horrified — at the time, nursing was considered a profession for the lowest of classes and for many patients, admittance to crowded, dirty hospitals often meant death. But after refusing the marriage proposal of a suitor because she clamored for a more fulfilling life, her parents finally relented. She traveled to Germany and later France to study, picking up many of the organizational and nursing skills she would later champion.

The Crimean War was the beginning of her hygiene movement

After briefly serving as superintendent of London’s Institution for Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances, Nightingale found herself called into action following the outbreak of war in 1853 between Russia and the allied forces of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire.

In 1854, news reports began carrying alarming headlines of the dangerous, deplorable conditions in British hospitals outside of Istanbul (then Constantinople). Nightingale swung into action , and by October, she and nearly 40 of her trained nurses were on their way to the front. They were shocked by what they found — severe overcrowding, poor food supplies, shoddy management and filthy quarters that were a breeding ground of infectious diseases like cholera, typhoid, typhus and dysentery, leading Nightingale to dub it the “Kingdom of Hell.” Male British officials initially refused to allow the women to work in the hospital, only relenting when a new wave of battle casualties flooded the ward.

Nightingale and her nurses went to work, scrubbing every inch of the facilities, insisting on regular bathing of patients and frequently changed, fresh linens from a newly established laundry. She solicited donations from Britain to purchase desperately needed bandages and soap and served specialized meals out of a new commissary. She railed against the poor ventilation and sewage system, insisting on bringing as much fresh air to the facility as possible, a decision that would influence the building of future hospitals around the world.

Within six months of her implemented changes, the hospital’s mortality rate had dropped precipitously from its previous high of 40 percent. Nightingale also introduced new approaches to the emotional and psychological side of patient care, with her nurses helping soldiers write letters home and Nightingale herself walking the ward at night with a lantern to check on her charges.

The nurse used statistics to prove that her theories worked

Upon her return from the Crimean War, Nightingale quickly put her fame to use. At the behest of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert , she wrote an extensive study, using her records to highlight the deadly toll of poor hygiene and sanitary conditions in British Army hospitals and military camps, leading to a massive reorganization of the British War Office.

One of the first to adopt what is now known as the “pie chart,” Nightingale also developed “ Coxcombs ,” or “rose” charts, which she used to assess mortality rates from the Crimean War, using applied statistics to differentiate from deaths caused by disease versus those due to battle. Nightingale estimated that 10 times as many British soldiers died from disease than combat during the war.

As British control of the Indian subcontinent expanded, she was pressed into duty again, developing a series of surveys sent to military installations and hospitals, which led to medical and scientific improvements for both soldiers and civilians across India. She would even consult with doctors and medical professionals in the United States, using her data and studies to advise on sanitary conditions in field hospitals during the American Civil War . Her achievements led to her selection as the first woman admitted to the Royal Statistical Society.

Nightingale revolutionized the nursing profession

Using donations and a sizable gift from the British government for her service in Crimea, Nightingale established the Nightingale Training School for Nurses, based at London’s St. Thomas’ Hospital, in 1860, followed two years later by a school for midwives. Women flocked to the schools, as previous notions of nursing as a lowly occupation faded away. Every nurse received one year of training and coursework followed by a two-year stint in hospital wards, after which many of them brought her gospel of cleanliness and care to medical facilities around the world.

Despite increasing ill health from diseases she had contracted during the war, which left her bedridden, Nightingale wrote extensively. Two of her works, Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing: What it Is and What it is Not , laid out her theories for future generations of health care professionals and remain in print to this day. They include practical advice on key topics, including the need for fresh air and ventilation, dietary rules, how to compassionately (but honestly) care for the desperately ill and, of course, good sanitation and hygiene, including the dictum : "Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face too, so much the better."

She was a pioneer in the field of public health

Nightingale’s accomplishments soon expanded past the confines of hospitals, turning her attention to Britain’s teeming, overcrowded slums and filthy workhouses, which saw the sick poor, including children, the mentally ill and those with incurable illnesses housed together. She worked with social reformers and urban planners on pioneering studies that shed light on the crushing medical, emotional and financial burdens of Britain’s poor.

She advised philanthropist William Rathbone on the development of a new “district nursing” plans, which saw skilled, trained nurses sent out to minister to the public in both hospitals and private homes, first in Liverpool and then across Britain. Her work and writings on public health played a key role in the passage of legislation that put health care decisions in the hands of local officials, not a centralized bureau, who were best equipped to deal with issues in their communities.

Nightingale continued her advocacy work until her death in 1910 at 90 years old, and her influence on the greater medical world is still felt today.

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The New York Sun

Florence nightingale now: a novel shifts not only the famed nurse’s perspective but our own.

The dialogue makes this novel a standout, creating out of two actual people characters who define their different places in a remote world made present.

‘Flight of the Wild Swan’ By Melissa Pritchard  Bellevue Literary Press, 416 pages

In Melissa Pritchard’s biographical novel, Florence Nightingale, the fabled “lady with the lamp” who brought women and the nursing profession to the front for the first time during the Crimean War, confronts a Jamaican woman, Mary Jane Seacole, who wants to nurse white soldiers. 

Nightingale is intrigued with Seacole but has no time to train more women volunteers. Lionized in spite of disapproving army officers and a family worried about her exposure to disease, Nightingale finds Seacole, “around forty, dark-skinned and possessed of the most unusual eyes,” captivating. Nightingale recognizes a shining intelligence “and something else, something rare in this place, so rare that I’d nearly forgotten it—a natural good humor. I liked her instinctively.”

Nightingale confides to her journal that Seacole “liked me a little, too—after all, we both cared about helping soldiers, both of us were unmarried by choice (I asked), and both of us were dedicated to nursing.” Their dialogue makes this novel a standout, creating out of two actual people characters who define their different places in a remote world made present:

“Who is it you work for, Miss Nightingale?” she asked. “For the British government. The army, specifically. Why? Whom do you work for?” “Myself. And those soldiers who have need of me. I answer to no government.” “I see.” “Do you? Do you see that by working for the government you are part of a class system that oppresses the poor and keeps those like myself ”—here she pushed up one sleeve of her dress, exposing the skin of her arm—“enslaved?” I wanted to protest, to tell her about my grandfather, his life’s work, abolishing the slave trade, but it seemed irrelevant—no, not even that, but … but what? A sign of my privilege. Eating her dinner, she looked up at me and smiled. There was no judgment in what she had just said to me; that was what was so extraordinary. She was not condemning me. She had simply spoken the truth. “Yes, I suppose I do see,” I said quietly. “But I am doing my best to change that system from within.” “Through reform?” Another thing about her. Her voice. Intelligent, calm. “Reform is slow work, but I have always believed in effecting change from within.” “Even in a system that allows women no power?” “I have had the advantage of family, of means. I use those.” She put down her fork, took a drink of water. Looked at me with a warm expression, almost as if we were friends. “We work from where God has put us, Miss Nightingale. I am poor, an outsider because of my race. Aside from the disadvantage of being a woman, you have boundless privilege.” “Perhaps. But does not an outsider, such as yourself, perceive the problem most clearly?” Even as I spoke, I heard the falseness of my words. Her burden was heavier than mine, yet her bearing and grace far greater. She would say one more thing that would nag at me. Shift my perspective. “So long as men are born, generations of war hunger—war itself—will be with us.” “I hope not, Mrs. Seacole. Truly, I hope not.”

The scene is a rebuke to Nightingale but also a revelation of her exquisite sensitivity to the implications of her way of doing good. Up to this point she has been viewed as a force of nature overturning Victorian conceptions of a woman’s place in the world. With Seacole, the novel’s frame of reference scales up, shifting not only Nightingale’s perspective but our own.

Where does such a scene come from? Look to the novel’s dedication to Ms. Pritchard’s husband, Dr. Philip Thomas Schley, who “read every draft with your surgeon’s eye for detail and historian’s attention to accuracy,” and to the acknowledgments: “To my grandmother Augusta Duwe Brown, R.N., and my great-aunt, Lorna Duwe Brown, R.N., sisters and nurses. To my grandfather Dr. Clarence J. Brown, surgeon and vice admiral, United States Navy, for organizing the overwhelming task of caring for all D-day casualties, transported by boat and train to the Royal Victoria Military Hospital in Southampton, England, a grand-looking, Italianate, nineteenth-century hospital Florence Nightingale once declared a catastrophe of inefficiency.”

This novel has been generations in the making.

Mr. Rollyson is the editor of “British Biography: A Reader.”

Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington, Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Criterion, and other publications.

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A Picture Book of Florence Nightingale (Picture Book Biography) Paperback – Picture Book, May 14, 2019

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Reading age 4 - 8 years
• Print length 32 pages
• Language English
• Grade level Preschool - 3
• Lexile measure AD820L
• Dimensions 9.5 x 0.15 x 8 inches
• Publisher Holiday House
• Publication date May 14, 2019
• ISBN-10 0823442713
• ISBN-13 978-0823442713
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Holiday House; Illustrated edition (May 14, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 32 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0823442713
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0823442713
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 4 - 8 years
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ AD820L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ Preschool - 3
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.5 x 0.15 x 8 inches
• #210 in Children's American History of 1800s
• #748 in Children's Historical Biographies (Books)
• #834 in Children's Women Biographies (Books)

About the author

David a. adler.

I write both fiction and non-fiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later. Of course, since I'll be spending a lot of time with each main character, why not have him or her be someone I like? Andy Russell is based, loosely, on a beloved member of my family. He's fun to write about and the boy who inspired the character is even more fun to know. Cam Jansen is based even more loosely on a classmate of mine in the first grade whom we all envied because we thought he had a photographic memory. Now, especially when my children remind me of some promise they said I made, I really envy Cam's amazing memory. I have really enjoyed writing about Cam Jansen and her many adventures. For my books of non-fiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. My first biography was Our Golda: The Life of Golda Meir. To research that book, I bought a 1905 set of encyclopedia. Those books told me what each of the places Golda Meir lived in were like when she lived there. I've written many other biographies, including books about Martin Luther King, Jr; George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; Helen Keller; Harriet Tubman; Anne Frank; and many others in my Picture Book Biography series. I've been a Yankee and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades so I wrote Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man. It's more the story of his great courage than his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig. I am working now on another book about a courageous man, Janusz Korczak. My book One Yellow Daffodil is fiction, too, but it's based on scores of interviews I did with Holocaust survivors for my books We Remember the Holocaust, Child of the Warsaw Ghetto, The Number on My Grandfather's Arm, and Hiding from the Nazis. The stories I heard were compelling. One Yellow Daffodil is both a look to the past and to the future, and expresses my belief in the great spirit and strength of our children. I love math and was a math teacher for many years, so it was fun for me to write several math books including Fraction Fun, Calculator Riddles, and Shape Up! Fun with Triangles and Other Polygons. In my office I have this sign, "Don't Think. Just Write!" and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, even each sentence or paragraph. For me stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times. And I work with my editors. I look forward to their suggestions, their help in the almost endless rewrite process. Well, it's time to get back to dreaming, and to writing, my dream of a job. David A. Adler is the author of more than 175 children's books, including the Young Cam Jansen series. He lives in Woodmere, New York.

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