The life of Florence Nightingale

by Sarah A. Tooley

The next point in Miss Nightingale’s letter was one which was at the root of the movement and which she invariably emphasised: “To drag the noble art of nursing out of the sink of relief doles.” It was believed that nothing would so effectually stop the pauperising of the people by indiscriminate charity as the trained nurse in the homes of the sick poor, who would teach her patients how best to help themselves. “To carry out,” continues Miss Nightingale, “the practical principles of preventing disease by stopping its causes and the causes of infections which spread disease. Last but not least, to show a common life able to sustain the workers in this saving but hardest work under a working head, who will personally keep the training and nursing at its highest point. Is not this a great success?

“District nursing, so solitary, so without the cheer and the stimulus of a big corps of fellow-workers in the bustle of a public hospital, but also without many of its cares and strains, requires what it has with you, the constant supervision and inspiration of a genius of nursing and a common home. May it spread with such a standard over the whole of London and the whole of the land.”

Two years later (1876) Miss Nightingale made an eloquent plea in a long letter to The Times for the establishment of a Home for Nurses in connection with the National Society for Providing Trained Nurses for the Poor. This letter was later reprinted as a pamphlet on Trained Nursing for the Sick Poor. In specially pleading for a Central Home for Nurses, she wrote, “If you give nurses a bad home, or no home at all, you will have only nurses who live in a bad home, or no home at all,” and she emphasises the necessity for the district nurse to have a knowledge of how “to nurse the home as well as the patient,” and for that reason she should live in a place of comfort herself free from the discomforts of private lodgings.

Miss Nightingale’s plea bore fruit in the establishment of the Central Home for Nurses, 23, Bloomsbury Square, under the able management of Miss Florence Lees. Nothing pleased Miss Nightingale better than to get reports of the experience of the district nurses amongst the poor, and to hear how the people received their visits and what impression they were able to make on the habits of the people. She was specially delighted with the story of a puny slum boy who vigorously rebelled against a tubbing which Miss Lees was administering.

“Willie don’t like to be bathed,” he roared; “oo may bath de debil, if oo like!” The implication that Miss Lees was capable of washing the devil white Miss Nightingale pronounced the finest compliment ever paid to a district nurse.

She has always impressed upon district nurses the need not only of knowing how to give advice, but how to carry it out. The nurse must be able to show how to clean up a home, and Miss Nightingale used frequently to quote the case of a bishop who cleansed the pigsties of the normal training school, of which he was master, as an example—“one of the most episcopal acts ever done,” was her comment.

At first the district nurses were recruited almost entirely from the class known as “gentlewomen,” as it was thought both by Miss Nightingale and Miss Lees that it required women of special refinement and education to exercise influence over the poor in their own homes. Also, one of the objects of the National Association was to raise the standard of nursing in the eyes of the public. It was soon proved that the lady nurses did not shirk any of the disagreeable and menial offices which fall to the lot of the district nurse. Broadly speaking, it is only the educated women with a vocation for nursing who will undertake such duties; the woman who merely wants to earn an income will choose hospital or private nursing. In the earlier stages of the movement the district nurses received high remuneration, and on this question of fees the Queen of Nurses may be quoted:—

“I have seen somewhere in print that nursing is a profession to be followed by the ‘lower middle-class.’ Shall we say that painting or sculpture is a profession to be followed by the ‘lower middle-class’? Why limit the class at all? Or shall we say that God is only to be served in His sick by the ‘lower middle-class’?

“It appears to be the most futile of all distinctions to classify as between ‘paid’ and unpaid art, so between ‘paid’ and unpaid nursing—to make into a test a circumstance as adventitious as whether the hair is black or brown, viz., whether people have private means or not, whether they are obliged or not to work at their art or their nursing for a livelihood. Probably no person ever did that well which he did only for money. Certainly no person ever did that well which he did not work at as hard as if he did it solely for money. If by amateur in art or in nursing are meant those who take it up for play, it is not art at all, it is not nursing at all. You never yet made an artist by paying him well; but an artist ought to be well paid.”

A most important outcome of the introduction of a system of trained nurses for the sick poor was the establishment of the Queen’s Jubilee Nurses. Queen Victoria, moved by the great benefit which the National Nursing Association had conferred, decided, on the representations of the Committee of the Women’s Jubilee Fund, furthered by Princess Christian, to devote the £70,000 subscribed, to the extension of this work.[D] The interest of the fund, amounting to £2,000 per annum, was applied to founding an institution for the education and maintenance of nurses for tending the sick poor in their own homes, with branch centres all over the kingdom. The charter for the new foundation was executed on September 20th, 1890.