The life of Florence Nightingale

by Sarah A. Tooley

Taken collectively, this little group may be termed the “party of reform” who were installed at Scutari at the beginning of the winter of 1854. Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, the wife of our Ambassador at Constantinople, and her “beauteous guest,” Lady George Paget, were also most helpful in sending little comforts for the wounded officers, but it was said of Miss Nightingale that she “thought only of the men.” The common soldier was undoubtedly her chief concern.

THE LADY-IN-CHIEF IN HER QUARTERS AT THE BARRACK HOSPITAL.

The Lady-in-Chief and her staff had their quarters in a tower at one of the corners of the hospital, and the busy life which went on there from day to day is thus described by the Rev. Sidney Osborne. “Entering the door leading into the Sisters’ Tower,” he writes, “you at once find yourself a spectator of a busy and interesting scene. There is a large room with two or three doors opening from it on one side; on the other, one door opening into an apartment in which many of the nurses and sisters slept, and had, I believe, their meals. In the centre was a large kitchen table: bustling about this might be seen the high-priestess of the room, Mrs. C——. Often as I have had occasion to pass through this room I do not recollect ever finding her absent from it or unoccupied. At this table she received the various matters from the kitchen and stores of the sisterhood, which attendant sisters or nurses were ever ready to take to the sick in any and every part of these gigantic hospitals. It was a curious scene, and a close study of it afforded a practical lesson in the working of true common-sense benevolence.

“The floor on one side of the room was loaded with packages of all kinds—stores of things for the internal and external consumption of the patients; bales of shirts, socks, slippers, dressing-gowns, flannel, heaps of every sort of article likely to be of use in affording comfort and securing cleanliness.... It was one feature of a bold attempt upon the part of extraneous benevolence to supply the deficiencies of the various departments which as a matter of course should have supplied all these things.

“In an adjoining room were held those councils over which Miss Nightingale so ably presided, at which were discussed the measures necessary to meet the daily-varying exigencies of the hospital. From hence were given the orders which regulated the female staff working under this most gifted head. This, too, was the office from which were sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters at home, telling such awful tales of the sufferings of the sick and wounded, their utter want of so many necessaries.”

We have in this description a glimpse into the beginning of the Lady-in-Chief’s organising work. In the sisters’ quarters she was from the first undisputed head, and by degrees the order and method which she established there affected every other part of the hospital.

While she was battling with red-tapism in order to get access to stores which lay unpacked in the vicinity of a hospital filled with poorly fed, badly clothed, and suffering men because nobody seemed to know who had the right to dispense them, sympathetic friends were keeping the store in the Sisters’ Tower replenished. But it was impossible to keep pace with the needs. The published letters sent home by the nursing staff at this period all contain requests for invalid requisites and clothing. The wounded were dying in scores for want of a little stimulant to rouse their exhausted systems when they first arrived at the hospitals, and men lying in clothing stiff with gore could not even procure a change of garment. As the cold increased, the frost-bitten patients, arriving from the trenches before Sebastopol, had not even the luxury of a warm shirt. One of the nurses writing home said: “Whenever a man opens his mouth with ‘Please, ma’am, I want to speak to you,’ my heart sinks within me, for I feel sure it will end in flannel shirts.”

The task of the Lady-in-Chief was to bring benevolent as well as neglectful chaos into order. She had to inquire into the things most urgently needed and advise her friends in England. All this was unexpected work, for it will be remembered that Mr. Sidney Herbert, in the letter inviting Miss Nightingale to go to Scutari, had dwelt on the fact, as he believed it, that the hospitals were supplied with every necessary. “Medical stores,” he had said, “had been sent out by the ton weight.”

Alas! through mismanagement, these stores had been rotting on the shore at Varna, instead of reaching Scutari, and much that had arrived was packed beneath heavy ammunition and difficult to get at. The loss of the Prince, laden with supplies, was a culminating disaster which occurred on November 14th, about two weeks after Miss Nightingale’s arrival.