FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LVII, Issue LVII, 14 May 1910, Page 5

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

HONORED BY THE KING.

[press association.]

(Received May 13, 2 p.m.) LONDON, May 12. The King telegraphed his congratulations to Florence Nightingale on the occasion of her birthday. She was born on May 12, 1820.

Honors have been heaped on this noble woman in her declining days. In November last the King conferred upon her the Order of Merit, the greatest award which the Sovereign can bestow for meritorious public service, and one which had never before been given to a woman. The bestowal of the freedom of the city of London, which took place in March,- >was also an honor which is usually reserved for Sovereigns and the statesman. A few weeks ago the Times, in an appreciation or Miss Nightingale, said:— "Of the paramount claims of 'Miss' Nightingale to any honors that the Sovereign can bestow there is little need to speak, short as is the public memory in these times. It may a indeed, be a surprise to many to learn that the heroine, of the Crimean campaign — the heroine of the struggle against death, disease and misery — is still living among us; but her name is one of the very few that is universally known, universally honored. At ninety years of age, during almost fifty of which she has been a suffering invalid, broken down by work and hardship in the Crimea, she still lives, and, what is more, still works for the causes to which her life has been given. It may be a' secret to the public, but it is well known to all who are in any sense behind the scenes, that Miss Nightingale in her. retirement has been as constantly consulted as if she were still "what she was in the Crimea, the 'Lady-in-ChieP of the nursing organisation. At the outbreak, of every war,, great, or small, Ministers and generals'- have r asked her advice, ■and it has been, freely given them. For to the end she has preserved, those qualities which gave her such "an incomparable influence in the evil days of the Russian war; immense good sense aand ungrudging self-devotion. On what she was then, and what she did. there is no need to dwell, for it is enshrined in the memory pi her country. She came forward at 'a time when incredible mismanagement had wrought incredible misery; when 20,000 British troops had been thrown down upon the shores of an enemy's country to face, not only a great army, but \ cold and disease, without huts, without proper clothing, and without the most elementary comforts, without medicines, and without nurses. Miss Nightingale and her picked band of thirty-eight nurse's — all new to the work, as every one was at that time — went out at Sidney Smith's invitation, and in spite' of the most scandaloug, opposition on the spot, ouickly changed the whole condition of things. On the one hand, she reformed the whole 'system of supplies to the sick; on. the other her personal presence brought comfort, hope, and even happiness to thousands of the wounded, the suffering, and the dying.