Florence Nightingale: Relevant as today's news

Eight years and one week ago today was a special day at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London. (Today is the 104th anniversary of her death.*) At a press event, we unveiled an extraordinary discovery, a previously unknown photograph of Florence Nightingale. To put this in perspective, Nightingale was so reclusive that barely more than two dozen known portraits of her are known to exist, despite the fact that photography was invented and came into fashion during her lifetime. In my 18 years with the museum, we often received prints—and even some original artwork—based on the few long-known Nightingale portraits. To put the discovery in perspective, although the National Portrait Gallery in London opened just after the Crimean War to serve the public interest in portraits of great Britons, it took many years for the gallery to acquire its first original portrait of Nightingale.

So the scarcity-induced value of the newly discovered photograph made August 6, 2006, a very exciting day for all involved in the museum. The photograph was taken around 1858 by William Slater, a pharmacist who lived and worked close to the Nightingale family home in Hampshire, in the south of England. Hidden away until after the death of a direct descendent of Slater, the photograph was donated to the museum by generous beneficiaries.

Reproduced by courtesy of the Florence Nightingale Museum Trust, London

At the time, I apprised the press on how new and fresh the photograph was—that it showed Florence Nightingale in an informal and relaxed setting, very different from the slightly austere post-Crimean studio images we had become accustomed to. It is a contemplative image. Nightingale is reading a book in the garden of her home at Embley Park, under the shade of a tree. A private note she wrote two decades previously, at the age of 16, revealed to posterity that it was there she had her first “call from God.” It was not yet apparent that her calling was to become a nurse, but as she gathered information, it gradually dawned upon her, and her calling became so strong that she was able to overcome the barrier of social stigma faced by aristocratic Victorian women and, as a result of her nursing work in the Crimean War, forged a new profession.

I found it quite remarkable that such a candid image could suddenly appear without us having known about it previously. Mark Bostridge, author of the then-recently published Penguin biography Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend—the photo graces the book’s front cover—had been involved in identifying the photograph and had spoken with its inheritors. About the lack of Nightingale portraits, Bostridge observed, “She regarded any personal publicity as detrimental to the causes of public health for which she worked so tirelessly after her return from the Crimean war.”

To our surprise and delight, the image was syndicated and the story of its discovery published across the world—from Zimbabwe to China. A thumbnail of the image appeared on the front page of The Guardian newspaper in England with a longer story inside. In the print edition of the paper, the story was published alongside news about a series of rocket attacks on northern Israel—“Israel’s bloodiest day yet as Hezbollah hits troops and Haifa.”

I discussed the juxtaposition of the Nightingale story with the report of conflict in the Middle East with Sir Robert Crawford, a museum trustee and then-director of the Imperial War Museum.** The juxtaposition was fitting, he observed, in light of the fact that, nearly 150 years earlier, Nightingale’s rise to fame had resulted from the effort that she and her nurses had brought to alleviate suffering of wounded soldiers.

Eight years to the day after the long-delayed unveiling of Nightingale’s photograph to the public, I began writing this post in a café in Antigua, Guatemala. Over coffee, I struck up a conversation with David, a young Swiss student on his travels, and talk turned to Florence Nightingale. He had not heard of her, he said, but he did tell me about some research he had done at school on the origins of the Red Cross. The Red Cross emblem, positioned on a white field, originated at the First Geneva Convention in 1864 and is the inverse of Switzerland’s flag, which has a white cross on a red background. As such, it is a tribute both to Henry Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the principle of neutrality in war, of which the Swiss nation has long been proud.

Dunant had witnessed the horrors of war firsthand in Italy, where, in 1859, he observed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino. In a book he wrote about his experiences, published eight years after the Crimean War, he cited the example of Florence Nightingale as a principle inspiration for his humanitarian work in wartime, and the International Committee of the Red Cross was created shortly afterward, in 1864.

Returning to my temporary home in Antigua, I looked up the latest information on the Red Cross and the Red Crescent and found the following tweets by Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which he made during a three-day visit to Gaza: 1) “I have a deep feeling of shock at what I’ve seen and anger that we weren’t able to prevent what has happened.” 2) “I was shattered to see the human impact of the conflict in #Gaza. I was angered and felt compassion for all those that lost loved ones.”

Today, eight years after the unveiling of the Nightingale photograph, conflict in the Middle East continues. I regard this post as an opportunity to pay tribute to courageous and skillful nurses, on both sides of the conflict, who are responsible for saving countless lives and are helping to begin the long and painful process of healing, one person at a time.

By the way, this October, members of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, join me on a Florence Nightingale tour to England, where we will visit her homes, including Embley Park, where the photograph was taken.

* Coincidentally, today is my 50th birthday. I am half the age of my grandmother, Hilda Austin, who celebrated her 100th in April. One of the greatest inspirations in my life, she was a nurse in England, and I dedicated my STTI-published book, Illuminating Florence, to her. Grandmother Hilda was born in 1914, the year the First World War broke out and the subject of Mark Bostridge’s latest book, The Fateful Year. He is, of course, also the latest biographer of Florence Nightingale. As you can see, I have a love for and a fascination about resonant dates.

** The Imperial War Museum, established as the first museum of peace, documented exhaustive details about suffering inflicted during the First World War, in the hope that such a conflict would never again occur. The war, which began 100 years ago this year, was so terrible that it was said to be “the war to end all wars.”

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.