In 1892 Miss Nightingale addressed a stirring letter to the Buckinghamshire County Council on the advisability of appointing a Sanitary Committee to deal with the health questions of the district. “We must create a public opinion which will drive the Government,” she wrote, “instead of the Government having to drive us—an enlightened public opinion, wise in principles, wise in details. We hail the County Council as being or becoming one of the strongest engines in our favour, at once fathering and obeying the great impulse for national health against national and local disease. For we have learned that we have national health in our hands—local sanitation, national health. But we have to contend against centuries of superstition and generations of indifference. Let the County Council take the lead.”
Miss Nightingale believed that the best method for promoting sanitary reform among the people was to influence the women—the wives and mothers who had control of the domestic management of the homes. Her next step was, with the aid of the County Council Technical Instruction Committee, to arrange for a missioner to teach in the rural districts of Buckinghamshire. She selected three specially trained and educated women, who were not only to give addresses in village schoolrooms on such matters as disinfection, personal cleanliness, ventilation, drainage, whitewashing, but were to visit the homes of the poor and give friendly instruction and advice to the women.
She knew, and respected the feeling, that an Englishman regards his home, however humble, as a castle into which no one may enter uninvited. Miss Nightingale had no sympathy with the class of “visiting ladies” who lift the latch of a poor person’s cottage and walk in without knocking. In launching her scheme of visitation she did the courteous thing by writing a circular letter to the village mothers, asking them to receive the missioners. The letter runs:—
“Dear Hard-working Friends,
“I am a hard-working woman too. May I speak to you? And will you excuse me, though not a mother?
“You feel with me that every mother who brings a child into the world has the duty laid upon her of bringing up the child in such health as will enable him to do the work of his life.
“But though you toil all day for your children, and are so devoted to them, this is not at all an easy task.
“We should not attempt to practise dress-making or any other trade without any training for it; but it is generally impossible for a woman to get any teaching about the management of health; yet health is to be learnt....
“Boys and girls must grow up healthy, with clean minds, clean bodies, and clean skins. And for this to be possible, the air, the earth, and the water that they grow up in and have around them must be clean. Fresh air, not bad air; clean earth, not foul earth; pure water, not dirty water; and the first teachings and impressions that they have at home must all be pure, and gentle, and firm. It is home that teaches the child, after all, more than any other schooling. A child learns before it is three whether it shall obey its mother or not; and before it is seven, wise men tell us that its character is formed.
“There is, too, another thing—orderliness. We know your daily toil and love. May not the busiest and hardest life be somewhat lightened, the day mapped out, so that each duty has the same hours? It is worth while to try to keep the family in health, to prevent the sorrow, the anxiety, the trouble of illness in the house, of which so much can be prevented.