 1820 - 1910 (90 years) Has 28 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
-
| Name |
Florence Nightingale |
| Birth |
12 May 1820 |
Firenze, Toscana, Italia  |
| Christening |
4 Jul 1820 |
Firenze, Toscana, Italia |
| Gender |
Female |
| FamilySearch ID |
L8MV-TV1 |
| Death |
13 Aug 1910 |
London, Middlesex, England |
| Burial |
20 Aug 1910 |
St. Margaret's Church, East Wellow, Hampshire, England |
| Headstones |
 Submit Headstone Photo |
| Headstones |
Submit Headstone Photo |
| Person ID |
I95683 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Father |
William Edward Shore, b. 15 Feb 1794, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England d. 5 Jan 1874, Southampton, Hampshire, England (Age 79 years) |
| Mother |
Frances Smith, b. 1789, Little Parndon, Essex, England d. 1880 (Age 91 years) |
| Marriage |
1 Jun 1818 |
Embley, Hampshire, England |
| Family ID |
F18168 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
-
-
-
| Notes |
- Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), known as “The Lady With the Lamp,” w a s a British nurse, social reformer and statistician best known as the f ou nder of modern nursing. Her experiences as a nurse during the Crimea n Wa r were foundational in her views about sanitation. She established S t. Th omas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 18 60. He r efforts to reform healthcare greatly influenced the quality of c are i n the 19 and 20 centuries.
Florence Nightingale: Early Life
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy to Fra n ces Nightingale and William Shore Nightingale. She was the younger of t w o children. Nightingale’s affluent British family belonged to elite soc ia l circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed from a family of merchants an d too k pride in socializing with people of prominent social standing. De spit e her mother’s interest in social climbing, Florence herself was rep orted ly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the c ente r of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Florence often butt ed he ads with her mother, whom she viewed as overly controlling. Still , like m any daughters, she was eager to please her mother. “I think I a m got some thing more good-natured and complying,” Florence wrote in he r own defense , concerning the mother-daughter relationship.
Florence’s father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy landowner w h o had inherited two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the othe r i n Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years old. Florence w as r aised on the family estate at Lea Hurst, where her father provided h er wi th a classical education, including studies in German, French and I talian .
From a very young age, Florence Nightingale was active in philanthropy , m inistering to the ill and poor people in the village neighboring he r fami ly’s estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to he r that n ursing was her calling. She believed it to be her divine purpose .
When Nightingale approached her parents and told them about her ambitio n s to become a nurse, they were not pleased. In fact, her parents forba d e her to pursue nursing. During the Victorian Era, a young lady of Nigh ti ngale’s social stature was expected to marry a man of means—not tak e u p a job that was viewed as lowly menial labor by the upper social cla sses . When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposa l fro m a “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Nightingale expl aine d her reason for turning him down, saying that while he stimulated h er in tellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires sa tisfac tion, and that would not find it in this life.” Determined to purs ue he r true calling despite her parents’ objections, in 1844, Nightingal e enro lled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Flied ner i n Kaiserwerth, Germany.
Florence Nightingale and Nursing
In the early 1850s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nur s ing job in a Middlesex hospital for ailing governesses. Her performanc e t here so impressed her employer that Nightingale was promoted to super inte ndent within just a year of being hired. The position proved challen gin g as Nightingale grappled with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary cond itio ns conducive to the rapid spread of the disease. Nightingale made i t he r mission to improve hygiene practices, significantly lowering the d eat h rate at the hospital in the process. The hard work took a toll on h er h ealth. She had just barely recovered when the biggest challenge of h er nu rsing career presented itself.
Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War
In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. The British Empire wa s a t war against the Russian Empire for control of the Ottoman Empire. T hous ands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea, where supplie s quick ly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 soldiers had been admi tted int o military hospitals.
At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in the C r imea. The poor reputation of past female nurses had led the war offic e t o avoid hiring more. But, after the Battle of Alma, England was in a n upr oar about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers, who not on ly lac ked sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly u ndersta ffed, but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and inhuman e conditio ns.
In late 1854, Nightingale received a letter from Secretary of War Sidn e y Herbert, asking her to organize a corps of nurses to tend to the sic k a nd fallen soldiers in the Crimea. Nightingale rose to her calling. Sh e qu ickly assembled a team of 34 nurses from a variety of religious orde rs an d sailed with them to the Crimea just a few days later.
Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, nothing co u ld have prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw when the y a rrived at Scutari, the British base hospital in Constantinople. The h ospi tal sat on top of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water an d th e hospital building itself. Patients lay on in their own excrement o n str etchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried p ast th em. The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew incre asingl y scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily increased. Eve n wate r needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectiou s disease s like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battl e.
The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set to work. She procured hundred s o f scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the insi de o f the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent ever y wak ing minute caring for the soldiers. In the evenings she moved throu gh th e dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministerin g to p atient after patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comfor ted b y her endless supply of compassion, took to calling her “the Lady w ith th e Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Angel of the Crimea.” Her w ork red uced the hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.
In additional to vastly improving the sanitary conditions of the hospita l , Nightingale created a number of patient services that contributed t o im proving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the creat ion o f an “invalid’s kitchen” where appealing food for patients with spe cial d ietary requirements was cooked. She established a laundry so tha t patient s would have clean linens. She also instituted a classroom an d a librar y for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Ba sed on he r observations in the Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matter s Affectin g the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the Br itish Army , an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing re forms for o ther military hospitals operating under poor conditions. Th e book would s park a total restructuring of the War Office’s administrat ive department , including the establishment of a Royal Commission for th e Health of th e Army in 1857.
Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the s u mmer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to h e r 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 rewa rd ed Nightingale’s work by presenting her with an engraved brooch that c am e to be known as the “Nightingale Jewel” and by granting her a prize o f $ 250,000 from the British government.
Florence Nightingale, Statistician
With the support of Queen Victoria, Nightingale helped create a Royal Co m mission into the health of the army. It employed leading statistician s o f the day, William Farr and John Sutherland, to analyze army mortalit y da ta, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 of the 18,000 death s wer e from preventable diseases—not battle. But it was Nightingale’s ab ilit y to translate this data into a new visual format that really cause d a se nsation. Her polar area diagram, now known as a “Nightingale Ros e Diagram ,” showed how the Sanitary Commission’s work decreased the deat h rate an d made the complicated data accessible to all, inspiring new st andards fo r sanitation in the army and beyond. She became the first fema le member o f the Royal Statistical Society and was named an honorary mem ber of the A merican Statistical Association.
Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Nursing
Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In 1860, sh e f unded the establishment of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within it, the N ight ingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of pu bli c admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in th e he roine’s honor. Young women aspired to be like her. Eager to follow h er ex ample, even women from the wealthy upper classes started enrollin g at th e training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer f rowned u pon by the upper classes; it had, in fact, come to be viewed a s an honora ble vocation.
While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted “Crimean fever” and would n e ver fully recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homeboun d an d bedridden, and would be so for the remainder of her life. Fiercel y dete rmined and dedicated as ever to improving health care and alleviat ing pat ients’ suffering, Nightingale continued her work from her bed.
Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate of health ca r e reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitor s f rom her bed. In 1859, she published Notes on Hospitals, which focuse d o n how to properly run civilian hospitals.
Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about ho w t o best manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authorit y o n public sanitation issues in India for both the military and civilia ns , although she had never been to India herself.
In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of honor by Kin g E dward. In May of 1910, she received a congratulatory message from Kin g Ge orge on her 90th birthday.
Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy
In August 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill, but seemed to recover a n d was reportedly in good spirits. A week later, on the evening of Frida y , August 12, 1910, she developed an array of troubling symptoms. She di e d unexpectedly at 2 p.m. the following day, Saturday, August 13, 1910 , a t her home in London.
Characteristically, she had expressed the desire that her funeral be a q u iet and modest affair, despite the public’s desire to honor Nightingale —w ho tirelessly devoted her life to preventing disease and ensuring saf e an d compassionate treatment for the poor and the suffering. Respectin g he r last wishes, her relatives turned down a national funeral. The “La dy wi th the Lamp” was laid to rest in Hampshire, England.
The Florence Nightingale Museum, which sits at the site of the origina l N ightingale Training School for Nurses, houses more than 2,000 artifac ts c ommemorating the life and career of the “Angel of the Crimea.” To th is da y, Florence Nightingale is broadly acknowledged and revered as th e pionee r of modern nursing.
|
|
|
English
