Florence Nightingale (COPY 1/11/f34)
On the 4 November 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived in Turkey with a group of 38 nurses from England. Britain was at war with Russia (the Crimean War, 1854 - 1856) and the conditions in the hospitals were very bad. Hundreds of soldiers were injured in the fighting. In those days, hospitals were very basic and there was not a lot of food and medicine to give the soldiers.
When Florence got to the hospital, she saw that wounded men were sleeping in overcrowded, dirty rooms without any blankets. This meant that the wounded soldiers were catching diseases like typhus, cholera and dysentery. More men died from these diseases than from their injuries.
When she arrived at the hospital, the army doctors who worked there did not want the nurses helping. Soon after they arrived however, there was a very large battle, and the doctors realised they needed the nurses’ help. Florence Nightingale realised that if the doctors were going to allow her nurses to work then they had to do a very good job.
Look at Source 1
1. This is a picture of one of the wards at Scutari Hospital.
Read Source 2
2. This report describes what happened in the hospital.
Look at Source 3
3. This is a map of where the fighting took place.
Read Source 4.
4. This list is part of a booklet given to all the nurses who travelled to Scutari with Florence Nightingale.
Now you are going to take part in a role-play.
It is late September 1854. Florence Nightingale and Elisabeth Herbert (the wife of Sidney Herbert, the Secretary of War) are interviewing a woman who wants to go to the Crimea as a nurse. First you will have to decide what questions you want to ask the woman. You can ask no more than eight. Use your observations from the exercise in section 2 to help you choose the ones that will be most effective in deciding whether the woman is suitable.
Now get into a group of three. One person should play the part of the woman who wants to go to the Crimea as a nurse. The other two play Florence and Elisabeth and ask the questions. At the end you must decide, do we offer the woman a job as a nurse?
Florence Nightingale was born on the 12 May 1820 to a wealthy couple. As she grew up, she decided that she had a calling to help the sick and injured, and decided she wanted to become a nurse. When Florence told her parents what she wanted, they were not happy. Being a nurse meant lots of hard work and heavy lifting, and they did not want this for their daughter.
Eventually, her father gave his permission for her to go to Germany to train. When she returned she became the lady superintendent (manager) of a hospital for gentlewomen in Harley Street, London.
When war broke out, the government only expected it to last until Christmas, it actually lasted 2 years. They were not ready for how many soldiers would be injured, and this was one of the reasons why the hospitals were in such a bad state. A reporter for the Times newspaper sent back several reports about the hospitals, and people in Britain started demanding something was done about them. This was when the Minister for War, Sidney Herbert, stepped in and asked Florence Nightingale to arrange and take charge of nurses to send to the war.
Florence returned after the war as a national heroine. She had been shocked by the conditions in the hospital and began to campaign to improve the quality of nursing in military hospitals. In October 1856 she met with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and in 1857 she gave evidence to a Sanitary Commission. This helped with the setting up of the Army Medical College.
In 1859, Florence published a book called “Notes on Nursing” which is still in print today. She also founded the Nightingale School & Home for Nurses at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Up until her death, Florence encouraged the development in nursing in Britain and abroad. The main reason we remember her is that she did a lot of work educating people about the importance of keeping hospitals clean and free from infections, and this work is carried on today in modern hospitals. Something which is less well known is that she was also very gifted with numbers and reports, and because of this, she became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858.
The Crimean War
(440.55kb)KS 1 & 2: What is HistoryFlorence Nightingale is best known for her work at Scutari hospital, Turkey, during the Crimean War and then afterwards for her role in developing nursing as a profession. She is also known as "the lady with the lamp" and this quote relates to an article published about her in the Times newspaper on Thursday 8 February 1855 which reads "She is a 'ministering angel' without any exageration 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 these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds."
The mention of the miles of sick relates to contemporary reports that the wards at Scutari stretched for 4 miles.
It took Florence and her nurses 13 days to reach Scutari, they travelled by ship to Boulogne, then overland to Marseilles where the had a break in the journey. From Marseilles, they took the mail steamer "Vectis" to Scutari.
Other women who nursed during the Crimean war are Mary Seacole and Elizabeth (Betsy) Davis. Both had approached Nightingale to work in her hospital at Scutari, but Seacole was turned down, and Davis was one of a party who were sent to Scutari but was not wanted by Nightingale.
Key Stage 1&2
The documents are designed for use in Key Stage 1 as part of an enquiry into Florence Nightingale and are intended to be read to pupils by their teacher. They can also designed for use in Key Stage 2 as part of a study of the Victorians.
Sources
Illustration - COPY 1/11
Source 1 - ‘One of the wards of the hospital at Scutari’, an illustration published 21 April 1856 by Paul & Dominic Colnaghi & Co - Wellcome Library, London
Source 2 - WO 33/1 An extract from the ‘Report upon the state of the hospitals of the British Army in the Crimea and Scutari’
Source 3 - © Maps in Minutes, 1999
Source 4 - WO 43/963 Extract from Rules and Regulations for the Nurses Aattached to the Military Hospitals in the East. You may need to help with some of the language in this document:
Derry Wrapper : A wrapper is a type of dressing gown.
Linseywoolsey : A course fabrc made from linen or cotton with a wool filling
Alpaca : A glossy black woolen fabric
Stays : Flat strips of steel or plastic used for stiffening corsets & collars etc.
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