NIGHTINGALE, PUBLIC HEALTH AND VICTORIAN SOCIETY

From the British Library, London

Part 1: Correspondence Relating to the Crimea, India and Public Health Reform
Part 2: Family Letters and Correspondence with Clough, Jowett, Martineau, Mill and others
Part 3: Writings on Nursing, India, Religion, Philosophy and other subjects with correspondence regarding the Nightingale Fund
Part 4: Correspondence with Nursing Staff and Papers Relating to St Thomas's Hospital and other subjects

Publisher's Note

“Microfilm publication of Florence Nightingale’s original letters is good news for scholars. It will make available a substantial portion of the best collection in the world, that of the British Library … no other archive covers the full range of Nightingale’s interests remotely as well as does the British Library: philosophy, politics, religion, public health, nursing, war, India, statistics and women.”

Dr Lynn McDonald
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph
Editor of “The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”

From an early age Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) knew that her life was to be dedicated to nursing and the welfare of the sick. At the age of sixteen she experienced a ‘call to service’, but nursing was at that time a low-class ill-paid occupation and Nightingale’s family would not permit her to take up her calling. Her determination eventually won through when she was given permission to lead a group of nurses to the Crimea to care for the sick and wounded soldiers. Reports of Nightingale’s ceaseless work reached the public’s attention and admiration, and on her return home in 1856 Nightingale was feted by Victorian society as a heroine. Nightingale intensely disliked her status as heroine but she found it was to prove useful in getting attention and support for her work, and through an impressive network of politicians, government officials, and journalists she was able to effect pioneering nursing and hospital reform. Nightingale’s concern was for all classes of society: for the poor sick in the workhouses, the ordinary soldier in military hospital, as well as those in civil hospitals. Today Nightingale is remembered as the major founder of the modern nursing profession, and for her contribution to a public healthcare system based on health promotion and disease prevention.

The microfilm series, Nightingale, Public Health and Victorian Society details the life and work of Florence Nightingale and is sourced from the British Library. Our Consultant Editor for this series, Dr Lynn McDonald describes this collection as, “the largest and most diverse collection or original material by Florence Nightingale in the world”. The archive features Nightingale’s letters, papers, manuscripts and books. Nightingale wrote letters almost every day of her life and for many of the original letters there are also the drafts and copies of her correspondence.

Part 1 of our microfilm publication contains Florence Nightingale’s correspondence relating to public health reform, India and the Crimea. Included are letters to Sidney Herbert, Fox Maule and John Joseph Frederick of the War Office and members of the staff of the Army Medical School such as Edmund Alexander Parkes, Professor of Hygiene, William Aitken, Professor of Pathology and Thomas Longmore, Professor of Military Surgery. There are many letters to leading figures in sanitary reform such as Dr John Sutherland, Sir Robert Rawlinson who headed the sanitary commission sent to the Crimea in 1855 and Sir Edwin Chadwick. There are also letters to influential holders of public office such as Lt-Colonel John Henry Lefroy, William Farr, Superintendent of Statistics at the General Register Office and Sir John McNeill, surgeon and diplomatist. A large section covers her letters with Captain Sir Douglas Strutt Galton, Assistant Under-Secretary for War and Director of Public Works and Buildings.

Letters are also included from Florence’s sister Parthenope which give us an insight into Nightingale’s character and how her time in the Crimea had affected her. Of particular interest are the letters Florence Nightingale wrote to the wives of leading figures. Included is her correspondence with Mary Elizabeth Herbert, Laura Rolfe, Selina Holte Bracebridge, Elizabeth Sutherland, Marianne Strutt Galton and Elizabeth McNeill.

Fascinating material for the Crimea includes her autobiographical memoranda, reports on her Crimean nurses and her accompt books during the Crimean War. Included also are her letters giving details on the soldiers who died in her care. Correspondence with nurses includes: Jane Catherine Shaw Stewart, a Crimean nurse, later Lady Superintendent of Netley Hospital, Sybil Airy, an Army nurse later Matron of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Bournemouth and Amy E Hawthorn, a nurse during the First Boer War.

Also included is correspondence with sanitary reformers of India, Queen Victoria and her family, viceroys of India and governors of India presidencies.

Part 2 covers Nightingale’s family letters and correspondence with intellectual and political friends. Letters with family include correspondence with her parents; with her sister Frances Parthenope and her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney; her nephew, Frederick William Verney and his wife Maude; Gwendolen Verney, daughter of the former; her uncle and aunt, Samuel and Mary Smith; her aunt, Hannah Nicholson; her cousin, Joanna Hilary Bonham Carter; Edith Joanna Bonham Carter; her cousin, William Shore-Smith and his wife, Louisa Eleanor and Rosalind Frances Mary Shore-Smith, daughter of William Shore-Smith and wife of Vaughan Nash.

Nightingale writes to members of her family on all manner of subjects. Some letters are of a very personal nature showing her caring side, regularly sending flowers and presents. Many letters concentrate on her ongoing interests: hospitals, army medical schools, nursing and sanitation in India. She corresponds regularly on schools for Bosnian children in Sarajevo, the Gordon Boys’ Home, the Buckinghamshire Lunatic Asylum, Home Rule, women’s suffrage and the political career of her nephew Frederick William Verney (“Mr Fred”). Some of this correspondence includes letters not previously catalogued by Goldie and largely unknown to scholars.

Nightingale was a prolific letter writer and her correspondence with important figures of the period contains representatives from every facet of social, political and literary life. Included are groups of letters from: Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford - letters on philosophy and religion; Sir Henry Wentworth Dyke Acland, Professor of Medicine at Oxford - letters on health in workhouses; Henry Burrard Farnall, Poor Law Board Inspector; John Stuart Mill - letters regarding religion and women’s suffrage; Charles Pelham Villiers MP; Viscount Gathorne Hardy - regarding the Poor Law and hospitals; Sir William Henry Wyatt, the social reformer – concerning probationary nurses and workhouse nursing; Thomas Spring-Rice and his wife Elizabeth; Harriet Martineau - on prostitution, public health in India and medical/nursing services in the American Civil War; Mary Carpenter, social reformer - regarding social reform in India; Julia Salis Schwabe - concerning the improvement in the welfare of Italian women; Mrs Georgiana Moore, Mother Superior of the Convent of our Lady of Mercy, Bermondsey - on the condition of workhouse hospitals.

Included also under General Correspondence are a fascinating mix of correspondents touching on a multitude of topics: Lady Canning, Lord Palmerston, Lord Grey, Nightingale nurses and nursing superintendents, G W Hastings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Mrs Gatskell, Sir William Heathcote concerning hospitals, Charlotte Balfour, George Carr regarding nursing in workhouses, Thomas Watson, the Chairman of the Committee on Workhouse Infirmaries, Louisa Freeeman, the Lady Superintendent of Nurses at the Workhouse Infirmary in Liverpool, the Birmingham branch of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, J H Barnes at the Lying-In department of the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary, Louisa Twining of the Association for Promoting Trained Nursing in Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Asylums, Sir F Roberts concerning homes for sick nurses and sanitation in army hospitals in India, Lydia Constable at the Gordon Boys’ Home, Lord Cross, Principal Secretary of State for India regarding sanitation in India, Lady Roseberry regarding the nursing of the sick at home, Horace Walpole, G Snodgrass at the Royal Military Infirmary in Dublin, various correspondents in the USA, Sweden and Hungary, John R Lunn at St Marlebone Infirmary in Notting Hill, London and Jane Wilson of the Workhouse Infirmary Nursing Association.

Part 3 focuses on the writings and statistical research of Nightingale with informative drafts of both published and unpublished articles, notes and memoranda covering her papers, articles, books and government reports. We include Nightingale’s writings on civilian and military nursing, India, her religious beliefs and philosophy, as well as some of her personal journals. We also include the fifteen volumes of correspondence between Nightingale and her cousin, Henry Bonham Carter, concerning the Nightingale Fund from 1861 to 1902.

Nightingale’s technical writings on nursing and hospital reform were carefully researched by her using statistical information from government reports and questionnaires, and by interviewing experts. As a result, her writings were respected by her contemporaries who knew that she had done her homework, and in this way Nightingale was able to get support from high-level medical experts, cabinet ministers and other senior officials. The respected Victorian sanitarian, John Sutherland, the statistician William Farr at the General Register Office, and the engineer and water expert, Robert Rawlinson were some of those who helped Nightingale with advice and statistical data and information. They were people who shared Nightingale’s vision for an improved healthcare system.

Among Nightingale’s writings on nursing and hospital reform we include her manuscript notes and drafts for Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes and Notes on Lying-In Institutions, both pioneering studies; notes relating to civilian hospitals in the British Isles and Canada; and statistical diagrams and plans of hospitals. Nightingale was a long-serving member of the War Office and she never lost her commitment to improving the quality of life for the ordinary soldier. Material on army medicine includes drafts for Notes on Matters affecting the Health of the British Army published in 1858, and papers relating to the Army Sanitary Commission (1857), War Office Re-Organisation (1861-1862), military hospitals and nursing (1855-1883), and the Army Hospitals’ Services Inquiry Committee and Egyptian Campaign (1882-1885).

Nightingale’s work on India has been little written about, the first full-length book on the subject was only published in 2004 and there are few scholarly articles on it. Nightingale worked on India for more than forty years and during this time she instigated a royal commission on India and promoted broad terms of reference for public health. Much of her work during this period went unnoticed, for example her talks with officials, governors and viceroys as well as those Indian nationals committed to health reform. Her papers also reveal a change in her tactics and she began approaching local areas and local institutions, instead of tackling problems from the top. We include: papers relating to the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India; drafts of articles on Indian sanitation, land tenure, and education (1865-1879, 1882-1891); drafts of her unpublished work, The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life or Death in India; accounts by Nightingale of interviews with experts on Indian affairs (1877-1898) and reminiscences by Nightingale of her work with successive Viceroys and Secretaries of State (1897).

In addition to her technical work Nightingale also wrote on religion and philosophy, and we include notes and drafts of Suggestions for Thoughts to the Searchers after Truth among the Artizans of England (3 vols) which was privately printed in 1860, and contains marginal notes by J S Mill. There are also drafts of the unpublished, Notes from Devotional Authors of [the] Middle Ages, collected, chosen, and freely translated by Florence Nightingale (1872-1874); notes prepared for The School Children’s Bible published in 1873; and essays on religion and philosophy, several of which were submitted to Benjamin Jowett (1870-1872). Nightingale’s private and domestic life are recorded in her diaries for 1850 and 1877; a Commonplace Book for 1836; and Household Book for the period July 1888-February 1889.

The Nightingale Fund was set up from donations received from the general public as an expression of gratitude to Nightingale for her nursing care for the sick and wounded in the Crimea. Nightingale’s cousin and friend from childhood, Henry Bonham Carter, who was also a close work colleague for many years, was the secretary of the fund. The correspondence of the Nightingale Fund covers the period from 1861-1902 and contains the letters of Nightingale with Henry Bonham Carter. The fund provided for much pioneering nursing and hospital reform work.

Part 4 covers Nightingale’s work with the nursing profession. Lynn McDonald says “Her pioneering work in bringing professional nursing into the workhouse infirmaries, a major step towards the achievement of a public health care system, has received little scholarly attention. This required careful political manoeuvring as well as nursing expertise, and is a fascinating story as it unfolds”. This story can be followed in this collection of manuscripts.

They consist of Nightingale’s correspondence with key nursing figures, not only at St Thomas’s Hospital, where the Nightingale Training School was based, but also in hospitals and other nursing institutions throughout Britain and the world. As well as founding the Nightingale Training School she was also involved in establishing the East London Nursing Society (1868), the Workhouse Nursing Association and National Society for Trained Nurses for the Poor (1874) and the Queen’s Nursing Institute (1890).

At the beginning of the nineteenth century hospital nurses were uneducated working-class women whose main tasks consisted of cleaning patients, making beds, emptying slops and making poultices. Most nurses worked a 16 hour shift and had no paid time off. They had no space of their own, they cooked over the ward fire and slept in the attics, cellars and sometimes in the wards with the patients. Most of the nurses were illiterate and considered unrespectable, being prone to drunkenness. In charge of them was a housekeeper who usually came from the lower middle class. She was not a nurse and was only responsible for order and discipline among the nurses.

However by the end of the century thanks to Nightingale and the training of nurses at the Nightingale Training School the profession and its status in society had changed beyond recognition. Ordinary nurses were trained and had become respectable workers and the matron was a trained nurse of the upper classes whose chief responsibility was to train the nurses and make sure they provided good patient care. Professional nursing was available to all on a par with that available at fee-paying hospitals.

The Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital was founded by Nightingale in 1860 and nurses trained there were sent to hospitals across Britain and abroad. Nightingale care consisted of orderly, disciplined female controlled nursing which emphasised hygiene and moral as well as physical cleanliness. Nurses consisted of less educated working class women who entered as lay sisters who would receive a small amount of money on completion and placement in an institution or home and who were under the control of middle class women who entered as Lady or Special Probationers and became Sisters. The training lasted for one year and the students lived in private rooms with a common social room in a special area of the hospital. They attended classes with an average size of 20-30 students and also looked after the sick at the hospital.

At the end of the 1860s, after a period of leaving the running of the school to the Matron, Mrs Wardroper, Nightingale resumed her interest in the daily work of the school and realised her rules were not being implemented and the Sisters had no control of the probationers. Nor were these women given any opportunity to improve their education and religious knowledge which she believed were essential for the training of a nurse. She therefore began to make efforts to improve the school and made changes to staff. Mrs Wardroper remained, but the apothecary was dismissed and a surgeon was employed to give lectures. Mary Crossland, as Home Sister, was employed and Nightingale herself began to see the nurses on a regular basis and write her famous annual addresses to the probationers.

The correspondence in the Nightingale papers in this part covers key British nursing figures:

• Mrs Sarah Elizabeth Wardroper, Matron of St Thomas’s Hospital, 1857-1894Angelique Lucille Pringle of the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh and Matron of St Thomas’s Hospital, 1872-1909
• Louisa McKay Gordon, Matron of St Thomas’s Hospital, 1890-1900
• Mary S Crossland, “Home-Sister”, 1875-1900
• Sarah Anne Terrot, a former Crimean nurse who worked with Nightingale, 1857-1868
• Mary Jones, Lady Superior of St John’s House Training Institution for Nurses, 1860-1881. She also led the midwifery nurse training programme at King’s College Hospital
• Maria M Machin, Matron of Montreal General Hospital and of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, 1873-1900
• Mary J Pyne, Matron of Westminster Hospital, 1873-1897
• Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes, Matron of the London Hospital, 1889-1899
• Rachel Williams, Matron of St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, 1873-1899
• Jane E Styring, Matron of Paddington Infirmary, 1877-1900
• Elizabeth Vincent, Matron of St Marylebone Infirmary, 1873-1901
• Elizabeth Anne Torrance, Matron of Highgate Infirmary, 1869-1877
• Annie E Hill, Matron of Highgate Infirmary, 1872-1877
• Flora Masson, Matron of the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, 1889-1897
• Elizabeth Ann Barclay, Lady Superintendent of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 1871-1877
• Frances Elizabeth Spencer, Lady Superintendent of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 1873-1900
• Jessie Lennox, Matron of Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, 1869-1896
• Agnes Elizabeth Jones, Lady Superintendent of Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary, 1861-1868 (together with extracts from her journal)
• Florence Sarah Lees, afterwards Florence Sarah Lees Craven, wife of Rev Dacre Craven, Superintendent General of the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association, 1868-1900
• Mary Elinor Wilson, Lady Superintendent of Scarborough Ladies’ Convalescent Home, 1868-1870
• Amy Hughes, Superintendent of the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association and of Bolton Workhouse Infirmary, 1891-1901

Also included are drafts of Nightingale’s letters to probationers at St Thomas’s Hospital, 1873-1900, to the nurses at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary, 1868 and to the nurses at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 1872-1873.

Correspondence relating to nursing abroad consists of:

• Correspondence with Sir Henry Parkes, GCMG, Prime Minister of New South Wales, 1866-1892
• Correspondence with Miss Lucy Osburn, (1836-1891), Superintendent of the Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, 1867-1885. Trained at the Nightingale Training School in London Osburn is considered the founder of modern nursing in Australia
• Correspondence with M Amy Turton, Superintendent of the Scuola Infermiera, Florence, 1893-1903
• Letters from Emily (Emmy) Rappe, a Swedish nurse, 1867-1870. She joined the Nightingale School in 1866 and returned to Sweden to take up a post at a new hospital in Uppsala and later became Inspector of Nursing Schools

Also included is Nightingale’s correspondence with medical officers, including surgeon John Croft, 1873-1893, Richard Gullett Whitfield, Apothecary and Resident Medical Officer, 1858-1872 and William Ogle, MD, physician of the Derbyshire General Infirmary, 1864-1891.

We also include letters to other important figures involved in public health reforms whom she could call on for advice and who worked with her behind the scenes.

• William Rathbone, MP, a wealthy Liverpool merchant and philanthropist who worked closely with Nightingale regarding the training of nurses. In 1862 the Liverpool Training School and Home for Nurses was established, from which a district nursing system was begun which spread throughout the country. He was also instrumental with Nightingale in the reform of workhouse infirmary nursing in Liverpool which Nightingale hoped would lead to general reform and later to the abolition of the workhouse system. Papers included here relate to the foundation of the Queen’s Jubilee Institute of District Nursing, 1887

• Surgeon-General Thomas Graham Balfour MD, mostly relating to the Army Sanitary Commission of 1857 and its report of 1858

• Alexander MacGrigor MD relating to his service as Principal Medical Officer and later as Deputy Inspector of Hospitals at the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, 1854-1855

Detailed notes by Nightingale of her interviews with hospital physicians and women concerned with the organisation of district or general nursing, covering 1871-1898 are also to be found in this fourth part as are the interesting notes of her interviews with members of the nursing staff of St Thomas’s Hospital, for the same period.

Miscellaneous memoranda and notes regarding the nursing profession are also included together with those relating to the Royal British Nursing Association and its charter.

This microfilm series featuring the manuscripts of Florence Nightingale held at the British Library provides a resource of great value to those researching nursing, public health, social reform, religion and philosophy in the Victorian period, as well as much important information on India and the Crimea.

<back