FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

White Ribbon, Volume 16, Issue 183, 15 September 1910, Page 1

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

HISTORY s scroll of honour for women is not a long one, but this does not necessarily argue that the number of heroines is small. It has been said with some truth, that women are not naturally endowed with courage, but they possess in a greater degree than men, the more passive and less showy virtue of endurance. Hence it

is that many a heroine, whose sphere does not extend much further than the four w’alls of her home, is destined to be unknown to fame, though deserving of a martyr 's crown. The crown of laurels which Fame offers is worn but by a few, and among those few is Florence Nightingale, her title to a place on the scroll of fame —the greatest nurse in history.

Born on May 15th, 1820, near Florence, in Italy (hence her name),

she had the good fortune to have a gentle, refined mother, and a father whose ideas of a girl’s education were very broad for those days. He was a wealthy country squire, superior in many ways to the usual type. He possessed two country seats, one in Derbyshire and the other in Hampshire, and at these two places Florence spent her childhood and her girlhood. She was well educated by her father, and was, besides, thoroughly domesticated. She

was deeply religious, and took great interest in her Bible class of girls. Her hobby w’as sick nursing, and she entered London hospitals to obtain experience. There she >und that the sick were at the mercy of nurses of the Sairey Gamp type, and that there was great need for reform. When the Crimean w ar broke out, and the British w'ounded w’ere being tended only by clumsy orderlies and untrained comrades, Florence wrote to the Minister of War, offering to organise a hand of nurses to go to Scutari. By a strange coincidence, her letter crossed one from the Minister, asking her to go. The result was that thirty-eight trained nurses arrived at Scutari the day before the battle of In kermann. so that their work began at once in real

earnest. The wounded occupied four miles of beds, not eighteen inches apart, but the chaos that ruled was soon reduced to order by this energetic and brave band. They w r ere naturally regarded as little less than angels by the many whose lives they saved. Florence was known among them as “ The Lady of the Lamp,” a w ord painting showing her to as as she glided among her patients in the night watches, smoothing a pillow here, encouraging a poor fellow there, receiving

the grateful looks and words of all, while her lamp lit up her sweet, calm face. Not till after the war was over, and the hospitals were empty, did Florence return to England. Shethen devoted herself to hospitals and nursing reform, and with the £IO,OOO subscribed by a grateful nation, she founded the Nightingale Training Home for Nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital. In 1907 the late King Edward conferred on her the Order of Merit, the first occasion on which it has been presented to a woman. In 1908 the citizens of London presented her with the Freedom of the City. Last month, at the advanced age of 90, Florence departed this life after a long illness, and the news of her death brought back to memory her great life work in the cause of fighting humanity. Not soldiers only, hut all humanitarians, can thank (rod for such a noble woman. (\S.L