The Nightingale family did not remain long in Italy, and soon after the birth of his youngest child William Nightingale, with his wife and two little daughters, returned to England where the two girls spent their childhood in a rambling old house in Derbyshire with many traditions and stories attached to it. Here Florence conceived a love for nursing and used to tend sick animals in the neighborhood and when she grew older, to sit up with and cheer the sick among the cottagers. There were not many people, even among those who were far older than herself, who could minister to the sick with her kindness and skill, and her fame soon was general through the neighborhood. Poor men used to come hat in hand to the old house requesting that Miss Florence spend a few hours with a sick wife or a young mother, and the Nightingales were kind enough and sensible enough to allow their daughter to do the work for which she had so evident an inclination.
There were no trained nurses in those days, and the general business of nursing as a profession was considered almost disreputable. Sick people were expected to be cared for by their relatives; hospitals were inefficient and badly run, and the comforts of the modern sickroom were unknown. As Florence grew older she thought a great deal about these things, and finally decided that she would do something which at that time was regarded almost as strange as if she had declared her intention of visiting the North Pole—she said she was going to become a professional trained nurse, and went abroad to study nursing on the Continent which was far ahead of England in such matters.
In a European hospital that was more in accord with the standards we know to-day and where comfort, skill and cleanliness went hand in hand, Florence Nightingale nursed the sick and acquired a mastery of the profession as it was then understood. It was so unusual for a woman of refinement to enter such a calling that she had become known in many places simply because she had decided to become a nurse; and after she returned to England she was at once offered the position of Superintendent at a Home for Sick Governesses in London.
This home, like many another benevolent institution in those times, was badly administered. As it constantly showed a deficit, its friends had become discouraged in supporting it, and the subscriptions on which it lived had been falling off. The ladies who were compelled to remain there did not receive the care that they should have had, and were unhappy and dispirited. This was the state of affairs when Florence Nightingale became the Superintendent of the Home.
In a very short time the Home was completely changed. Miss Nightingale had personally visited the former subscribers, and secured once more their help and patronage. She had changed the system on which the Home had been run to such an extent that it served as a model for institutions of its kind, and where the unfortunate women that lived there had been on the verge of actual physical suffering, they were now well cared for and contented.
Then war broke out between England, France and Turkey on the one side and Russia on the other,—a war that was brought about among other reasons by the desire of the Russian Czar to seize and hold the port of Constantinople. Great Britain and France supported the Turks and active fighting commenced. The theater of war soon shifted to the Crimean Peninsula where the British and French laid siege to the town of Sebastopol which was Russia's most important fortress and chief base of supplies. Before the walls of Sebastopol there took place severe fighting, which continued until bitter winter rendered further campaigning impossible.
While the war was going on thousands of sick and wounded British soldiers were pouring into the base hospitals at Scutari, where no provision for their care had been made. With the constant flood of wounded men, and men who were dying of dysentery and cholera, with no medical supplies and little food, with no nurses and only a few doctors, the condition of the British wounded soon became terrible beyond description. As there were no field dressing stations they had to be carried for days with their wounds undressed before they reached the hospital, and when they arrived it was often some time before the harassed doctors could care for them. They were brought in with their uniforms covered with filth and blood, and were laid in long rows on the floors of the hospital where few cots were to be found. Vermin crawled over the floors, over the walls and over the bodies of the helpless men. Rats gnawed the fingers of the wounded who were too weak to drive them away. There were no conveniences of any kind and many men died of exhaustion because no food adequate for the sick could be prepared. All the food, we are told, consisted of beef and vegetables boiled together in one huge caldron, into which new supplies were thrown indiscriminately as fast as they were delivered. The bread was moldy and the beef too tough even for well men to eat.
Owing to the efforts of a war correspondent of the London Times, the people at home were soon informed of the state of affairs in the Crimea, and gifts and supplies poured in profusely. But owing to the inefficiency and red tape of the War Department, the supplies were not delivered, but lay rotting in warehouses and in the holds of vessels while men died for the want of them. On one occasion, we are told, a consignment of shoes for the soldiers turned out to be in women's sizes. Improper inspections resulted in high profits, for the army contractors made uniforms out of shoddy and leather accouterments from paper, filled the cores of hay bales with kale stocks and cheated the Government right and left without forbearance or conscience.
Then the newspapers began calling for English women to go to the Crimea and care for the sick, and Florence Nightingale heard the call. She wrote a letter to Sydney Herbert who was Minister of War, volunteering to organize a body of nurses and go out to the Crimea to care for the wounded.
Right then a curious thing happened. The War Department had already decided that Miss Nightingale was the one person who could take charge of the reorganization of the hospitals in the Crimea, and had written a letter requesting her services. Offer and request crossed each other in the mails. On the following day her appointment was officially announced, and she was overwhelmed with proffers of assistance from all sides.