Florence Nightingale was born of wealthy English parents. She spent most of her childhood in England. Educated by her father, in a variety of subjects and languages, she felt called to serve God in some way. In 1846, nursing, not considered a suitable profession for her social position, became her mission in life.

Florence learned about the nursing work of the Lutheran Deaconess Institution at Kaiserswerth and the St Vincent de Paul Society in Paris. Through research she became widely regarded as an expert on public health and hospitals. In 1850 she went to Kaiserswerth to be trained as a nurse, and in 1853 became superintendent of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen, in London. Her very successful management led to invitations to advise other institutions.

The 1st reports from the Crimean War to reach London were grim, more soldiers died from infections than battle injuries. Women were urged to serve as nurses like the French Sisters of Mercy. Florence volunteered, and took a group of nurses to the military hospital at Scutari in Turkey. Conditions were appalling, overcrowding, lack of sanitation, infectious vermin, and not even basic nursing necessities. Florence had to battle the authorities and army doctors to improve conditions. Using her own money and funds from England to provide supplies to the hospital. She won the deep gratitude and respect of the soldiers she nursed, they called her, “Lady with the Lamp” for her late night visits to the wards, checking patients.

After the war, shunning all efforts to make her a national hero, she took up the cause of health and welfare in the army in general, providing extensive, damning evidence on conditions to a Royal Commission in 1857. She became an expert on conditions facing the British Army in India. Queen Victoria rewarded her work, presenting her with an engraved brooch and a £250,000 prize. In 1860 she used the prize money and £45,000 donated to the Nightingale Fund to establish the Nightingale School for Nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, the 1st of its kind in the world. Her expertise was called upon in the American Civil War and during the Franco-Prussian War.

From 1857 Florence lived as an invalid, mainly in London. She received numerous visitors and correspondence, relentlessly driving her friends to obtain what she needed to further her causes. Despite her illness she was single-mindedly devoted to her work. Her sight gradually failed, by 1901 she was blind. In 1907 she became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit.

BORN: 12 May 1820, Florence, Italy.

DIED: 13 August 1910, Mayfair, London, England.