Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 and led a very unusual life for a woman of her class and time. She was highly educated, speaking a number of languages, and tremendously well- travelled. She came from a very rich family caught up in a social whirl but quickly rejected this type of life, believing she had a vocation from God to nurse. She was a pioneer in social reform, all her life fighting for the health of the nation with politicians, the army and many in the world of medicine. She was also a statistician, the first woman to be elected to the Society of Statisticians, and her data collection and analysis in nursing practices brought forward new ideas that formed the foundation of modern nursing. She also brought respectability to nursing, which had not always been the case previously.
She particularly came to prominence in the Crimea War in 1854 when she took a highly disciplined group of 38 nurses with her to care for the wounded and dying. Her commitment to her nursing life and patients meant she was much admired, and at night she would go around the wards with a lamp, making sure they had the comfort of her nearness in the dark hours. This is how she became the” Lady with the Lamp.”
Independent and never married, she went on to be an Icon of the Victorian period and nursing profession.
