Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale1

Birth: 12th May 1820
Place of Birth: Florence, Italy
Nationality: British
Job Title: Nurse, Medical Pioneer
Partners: None
Died: 13th August, 1910

It is odd to find the story of a Gay Great who was not a victim in some form. Throughout the Gay Greats series, we have come across people who have been locked in jail, suffered nervous breakdowns, been cast aside by society and even committed suicide simply because of their homosexuality. It is undeniable that gay historical figures have often suffered greatly simply because the society they lived in did not understand them. However, this month’s gay great was not a victim or an aggressor; in many ways she was simply one of the greatest heroines the world has ever seen.

Florence Nightingale was born into such wealth that her parents were on an extended two year honeymoon in Europe when she arrived. Remarkably, her sister was also born during the honeymoon, so by the time the Nightingales returned to settle in Hampshire, their family was already complete.

Living the sort of idyllic childhood everyone dreams of, Nightingale and the rest of her family split the year between two large country houses. While the winters were spent at Embly Park in Hampshire, they whiled away the summer months at Lea Hurst in Derbyshire. Her father, a staunch liberal, went against the custom of the time and educated his daughters with a standard of teaching that was normally only afforded to male children. Although he did not plan for the girls to become anything in life other than socialites, he still ensured they were fluent in Greek and Latin, as well as highly capable in Maths and English.

Nightingale was clearly academic and excelled in the study of numbers and statistics. When not in lessons, she would often rescue injured animals that she found on the estate. She set up a small hospital in a disused greenhouse tucked away from her parents’ observant eyes to try to heal them. She also cared and tended for a pet owl, which was often to be seen peeking out of the pocket of her dress. This desire to care and heal carried on into her teenage years. She began to visit local hospitals and took an interest in public health, reading all of the books and government documents available at the time on the subject.

Her parents watched on with dread, hoping this fascination would pass. While doctors were revered, nurses were often considered the lowest women in society and were well known to double up as prostitutes as soon as the lights went out! The hospital ward was no place for a lady of Nightingale’s standing. She was discouraged by her parents at every turn. However, one day while walking in the garden of Embly, she heard a voice, which she assumed to be the voice of God. It told her that she was to carry out important work, to improve lives and to leave the world a better place than the one she had arrived in. Unfortunately the voice did not tell her what she was destined to do, or how she would bring about the changes.

With Nightingale still obsessed with medical matters, her father decided to send her away on an 18 month trip to Europe in a bid to broaden her horizons. The plan backfired. While she was away, she visited hospitals and medical institutions all over Europe, making notes and analysing the way they worked. By the time she got home, she was ready to begin a career in nursing.

However, she fell ill very soon after she returned and her Aunt Mai (her father’s sister) became her full time nursemaid. Mai worshipped her niece as if she was a wise elder and she was constantly by her side. Nightingale herself once commented on how the two were ‘like lovers’. However, there were other passions and suitors in Nightingale’s life too. She was infatuated with her cousin, Marianne Nicholson. Later in life, Nightingale described how she had only ever loved one person ‘with passion’ and that person was Nicholson.

But their affair was not to last. Unfortunately Nicholson’s brother Henry also had designs on Nightingale. For many years he attempted a courtship with her but Nightingale was not interested in the slightest. When he asked her for her hand in marriage, she declined, although the thought of being close to his sister on a permanent basis did make the offer more appealing. However, in Nicholson’s eyes, Nightingale had let her down and she refused to spend any more time with her. Nightingale was devastated by Nicholson’s rejection and she spiraled into depression.

Believing there was more to life than parties, receptions and sewing, Nightingale continued with her medical research and hospital visits. After much persistence, her father gave in and allowed her to study nursing in Germany, on the condition that she went in secret and told nobody what she was doing. After receiving training at Kaiserwerth, she returned to London and took a job in a London hospital for women. She soon became the head of the hospital and began to implement some of the changes that were soon to revolutionize the whole medical establishment.

The Crimean war broke out in 1854 and there were severe casualties from the outset. Standards in the military hospitals were low and men were dying from causes other than their battle wounds. The Secretary of State for War, Sydney Herbert, knew Nightingale well and was fascinated by her work. He decided to send her to one of the worst affected hospitals in Scutari, where she would set to work with a team of 38 hand picked nurses.

Nightingale and her team of nurses were shocked at what they found. All around the floors of the hospital, men lay dying while rats sniffed around the remains of rotting food, discarded by those soldiers too weak to eat. A stench hung in the air from the many soiled sheets and an over-flowing cesspit next to the hospital. Some men lay covered in bandages stained with dried out blood, while others lay dead, undiscovered by the doctors of whom there were far too few.

The reception the nurses received was cold. Here was a team of women, ready to work, all paid for out of the pocket of Nightingale’s father, yet the officers were not interested and were ready to turn them away. Nightingale went to work anyway, employing her stubborn, single-minded ways and demanded that the women at least be allowed to clean and cook. After some hours of discussion, the women were allowed to stay. A thorough clean up of the hospital began. Sheets were laundered, floors swept and men washed. Through Nightingale’s strict record keeping, we can see that deaths from illness other than injuries began to decline.

Nightingale’s commitment to the task was unflinching. She would work a 12 hour day, then take to the miles of corridors and wards at night with her now famous oil lamp. To the soldiers, she appeared like a shimmering angel as she passed the rows of beds, giving a reassuring glance, stopping to talk to anybody who was still awake. She wrote letters home for those soldiers who were not up to the task and would often conduct their financial affairs, making sure that money was sent home to their wives and children. As the conditions in the hospital improved, she set about creating reading and writing classes and other activities.

Returning soldiers told stories of the ‘lady with the lamp’ and her fame began to spread. At a time when the country really needed an injection of national spirit, the press presented Nightingale as the embodiment of heroism and British spirit. She represented a symbol of hope and goodwill in a world which was in the midst of the first modern war. Her fame and hard work elevated her to the position of administrator for the whole relief effort in the Crimea.

When the war began to draw to an end two years later, Nightingale refused to leave until the job was done. On a visit to one of the battlefields, she collapsed and broke into a fever. Most people thought that she would die and the press reported each small change in her condition to the awaiting public in the UK. Thankfully, she began to recover and was soon on her way back home.

She shunned the publicity that was afforded her and refused all invitations to public events. She did, however, accept a large reward -payment which she spent on setting up the first ever training hospital for nurses, based at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital.

Florence Nightingale2

Nightingale spent her later years as an invalid, her devoted aunt by her side constantly. From her set of rooms in London, she conducted her reforms of the medical establishment. People would come from far and wide to ask her advice on anything from how to fold the perfect hospital corner to building the ideal hospital. She even completed a report on the situation of medicine in India, a country she never visited. Her 1859 report ‘Notes on Nursing’ became the Bible of the medical world and is still widely read today.

Nightingale died at home on 13th of August 1910 at the age of 90. In her will, she refused a state funeral or burial in Westminster Abbey. Instead her body lies near her beloved childhood home in Hampshire.

In recent years, Nightingale’s work and reputation have been called into question. Her character has been described as selfish and her methods labeled ‘ineffective’. Only recently has her sexuality been called into question. Whether she was ever actively gay or not will never be clear. What is clear is that she never slept with a man and often described her closeness to other women. Whether or not she followed her homosexual feelings physically is unimportant, and despite the subsequent negativity the results of her work still stand. Without Nightingale, nurses would not have been trained, hospitals would not have been clean and more people would have died simply as a result of going to hospital. The greatest irony of Nightingale’s life is that hundreds of people as far away as India were saved from death by an old woman too ill to leave her own bed. In her dying days, she still summoned up the energy to work and to save just a few more lives. Whether or not some consider her selfish, hospitals all around the world still stand as a testamonial to the ideas and teachings of the ‘lady of the lamp’.