The following letter was sent in reply:
“Your Excellency,—I have the honour to acknowledge, on behalf of Miss Nightingale, the receipt of your letter of to-day, and of the very beautiful flowers, which she greatly appreciated.
“Miss Nightingale desires me to request you to be good enough to convey to His Majesty the Emperor how much she values his Majesty’s gracious expressions of esteem and good wishes. She has always thought most highly of the nursing of the Sisters of Mercy at Kaiserswerth.
“She also recalls with deep gratitude the friendship and sympathy with which his Majesty’s august mother, the late Empress, was pleased to honour her. Miss Nightingale would write personally but that failing health and eyesight prevent her.—I have the honour, etc.
“K. Shore Nightingale.”
The City of London might most fittingly have bestowed its honourable freedom upon Miss Nightingale when she returned from the Crimea in 1856, but the heroine’s retiring disposition and the conservatism of an ancient corporation stood in the way of that honour being bestowed. The late Baroness Burdett-Coutts was the first woman presented with the freedom of the City, and she has had no successor until, in February 1908, the Corporation, with the Lord Mayor presiding, passed with great enthusiasm the following resolution moved by Mr. Deputy Wallace:
“That the honourable freedom of this City, in a gold box of the value of one hundred guineas, be presented to Miss Florence Nightingale, in testimony of this Court’s appreciation of her philanthropic and successful efforts for the improvement of hospital nursing and management, whereby invaluable results have been attained for the alleviation of human suffering.”
Mr. Deputy Wallace in moving the resolution said that, “never in the history of the freedom of the City, including on its roll of fame the names of monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, and famous men of all kinds and of all callings, had it enrolled among the recipients of its honorary freedom a nobler name than that of Florence Nightingale.”
In accepting the honour of the Freedom of the City, thus offered, Miss Nightingale requested that the sum of one hundred guineas, which it was proposed to spend on the gold box for containing the scroll, should be given as a donation to the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses and the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen, Harley Street, of which Miss Nightingale was the first Superintendent.
The Court of Common Council acceded to Miss Nightingale’s request and arranged for an oak box to be used instead of the traditional gold casket.