NOT FOR FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 939, 5 October 1910, Page 11

NOT FOR FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

.'. Great disappointmentwas';caused,, byi the; I rejection- of /the >' Dean'bf' Westmin T / ster's offer.' of ."* ah .Abbey -burial for. the; late : Florence Nightingale,', says : a; writer; in .an English'iipaper.UProbaljlyjho'wr' everj a memorial.id the;,"L'ady, of;!the : Lamp"■-wilU-'betf. erected .either ■'.:in"! .the Abbey or. St.'; Paul's.';'■/,'• ; .'■'.." '-v.y :■■':■ :. The. most recent burials of■'.','famous, women in : Westminster' Abbey 'were those' of Mrs.: Wilberforce, -wife'of ; Arbhdeaco'n ,Wilberforce(l9o9), the' Baroness BurdettCoufts (1907), and Mrs. Gladstone ' (1900). Apart from queens, the best-known women buried; there were .nearly all .actresses. Annie' Bracegirdle, of : the seventeenth "century, lies in the east cloisters. "Engaging Oldfield," whom Miss Ellen Terry impersonates so delightfully, lay in state in..';'the Jerusalem Chamber, and was buried below the monument of Congreve. Spranger Barry's wife, an unrivalled Desdeniona in her time, is buried by her husband's side. Near her, in the clois-ters,-lies Mrs. Gibber. . ••.'■■"'. .

Other actresses havo had i. monuments erected to their, memory in "tho Abbey; among them Mrs. .Siddons, Mrs. Botter : ton.'-and HannahS'Pritchard. .• Jenny Lind, Elizabeth Barrett • Browning, and /Fanny Burhey- also have Abbey monuments.. 'Another remarkable tomb is that of Elizabeth' Claypole,, Oliver Cromwell's daughter,, who alono of. Cromwell's family was allowed to remain undisturbed when they were'disinterred at the Restoration.. ;

George Eliot; would have been buried in Westminster Abbey but for her religious yiews. . The Dean refused 'to admit'the novelist's remains to interment: there, and Huxley supported his decision, declaring her ..'to; have been "a person whose life and- opinions were in notorious antagonism;-; to Christian practice." , Curiously enough,: there is already a Nightingale memorial' in the Abbey—that of Lady Elizabeth Nightiiigale, sister of the Countess" of Huntingdon. '; '.