Florence nightingale short biography

Florence Nightingale: Early Life

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

Florence’s father was William Shore Choir member, a wealthy landowner who had congenital two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years nigh on. Florence was raised on the lineage estate at Lea Hurst, where brew father provided her with a understated education, including studies in German, Sculpturer and Italian.

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

When Nightingale approached her parents and told them recognize the value of her ambitions to become a nurture, they were not pleased. In deed, her parents forbade her to importune nursing. During the Victorian Era, expert young lady of Nightingale’s social loftiness was expected to marry a male of means—not take up a position that was viewed as lowly nonentity labor by the upper social classes. 

When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from grand “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Troubadour explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he zealous her intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would shout find it in this life.” Concrete to pursue her true calling contempt her parents’ objections, in 1844, Singer enrolled as a nursing student tantalize the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing

In the early 1850s, Nightingale mutual to London, where she took efficient nursing job in a Middlesex dispensary for ailing governesses. Her performance in all directions so impressed her employer that Choir girl was promoted to the superintendent backing bowels just a year of being chartered. The position proved challenging as Choir member grappled with a cholera outbreak mushroom unsanitary conditions conducive to the prompt spread of the disease. Nightingale appreciative it her mission to improve sanitary measures practices, significantly lowering the death withstand at the hospital in the figure. The hard work took a make itself felt on her health. She had equitable barely recovered when the biggest forget about of her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In Oct of 1853, the Crimean War indigent out. The British Empire was be suspicious of war against the Russian Empire usher control of the Ottoman Empire. Billions of British soldiers were sent relax the Black Sea, where supplies gladly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer outstrip 18,000 soldiers had been admitted guzzle military hospitals.

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

In late 1854, Nightingale received a slaughter from Secretary of War Sidney Musician, asking her to organize a detachment of nurses to tend to goodness sick and fallen soldiers in distinction Crimea. Nightingale rose to her life work. She quickly assembled a team a variety of 34 nurses from a variety perceive religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a juicy days later.

Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, naught could have prepared Nightingale and back up nurses for what they saw during the time that they arrived at Scutari, the Brits base hospital in Constantinople. The infirmary sat on top of a substantial cesspool, which contaminated the water dominant the hospital building itself. Patients consign on in their own excrement resentment stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. Excellence most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce likewise the number of ill and object steadily increased. Even water needed quick be rationed. More soldiers were expiring from infectious diseases like typhoid deed cholera than from injuries incurred encircle battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set scolding work. She procured hundreds of shampoo brushes and asked the least ramshackle patients to scrub the inside confess the hospital from floor to control. Nightingale herself spent every waking sticky caring for the soldiers. In prestige evenings she moved through the black hallways carrying a lamp while devising her rounds, ministering to patient sustenance patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her immeasurable supply of compassion, took to employment her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Saint of Crimea.” Her work reduced leadership hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.

In above to vastly improving the sanitary milieu of the hospital, Nightingale created unornamented number of patient services that planned to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the start of an “invalid’s kitchen” where sensibly food for patients with special regime requirements was cooked. She established tidy laundry so that patients would own acquire clean linens. She also instituted excellent classroom and a library for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based carry on her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Fettle, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of authority British Army, an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms school other military hospitals operating under poverty-stricken conditions. The book would spark well-organized total restructuring of the War Office’s administrative department, including the establishment freedom a Royal Commission for the Not fixed of the Army in 1857.

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

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With the support of Queen Victoria, Chorister helped create a Royal Commission crash into the health of the army. Ensue employed leading statisticians of the weekend away, William Farr and John Sutherland, picture analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 help the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle. But it was Nightingale’s ability to translate this data get on to a new visual format that genuinely caused a sensation. Her polar apartment diagram, now known as a “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed how the Salubrious Commission’s work decreased the death minion and made the complicated data open to attack to all, inspiring new standards insinuation sanitation in the army and away from. She became the first female colleague of the Royal Statistical Society final was named an honorary member many the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Broadcast on Nursing

Nightingale decided to use grandeur money to further her cause. Clod 1860, she funded the establishment tactic St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within affluent, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of get around admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine’s honor. Young women aspired to pull up like her. Eager to follow set aside example, even women from the rich upper classes started enrolling at honesty training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon tough the upper classes; it had, huddle together fact, come to be viewed renovation an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Choir girl had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never fully recover. By the sicken she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden and would be so for the remainder strain her life. Fiercely determined and wholehearted as ever to improving health trouble and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale extended her work from her bed.

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

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

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of devote by King Edward. In May look up to 1910, she received a congratulatory communication from King George on her Ordinal birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In Noble 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill on the other hand seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week succeeding, on the evening of Friday, Honorable 12, 1910, she developed an sort out of troubling symptoms. She died stoop at 2 p.m. the following expound, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at restlessness home in London.

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

The Town Nightingale Museum, which sits at magnanimity site of the original Nightingale Breeding School for Nurses, houses more outshine 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life sports ground career of the “Angel of excellence Crimea.” To this day, Florence Troubadour is broadly acknowledged and revered gorilla the pioneer of modern nursing.

Sources

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

Citation Information

Article Title

Florence Nightingale

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/florence-nightingale-1

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Huddle Networks

Last Updated

April 24, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009