After Miss Nightingale received the gift of this convenient vehicle, she redoubled her exertions on behalf of the soldiers still remaining in the Crimea. The winter was severe and snow lay thick on the ground, but it did not deter her from constantly visiting the camp hospitals, and she was known to stand for hours at the top of a bleak rocky mountain near the hospitals, giving her instructions while the snow was falling heavily. Then in the bleak dark night she would return down the perilous mountain road with no escort save the driver. Her friends remonstrated and begged her to avoid such risk and exposure, but she answered by a smile, which seemed to say, “You may be right, but I have faith.” M. Soyer was so impressed by the danger that Miss Nightingale was incurring, that he addressed, as he relates, “a letter to a noble duchess, who I knew had much influence with her.” I am afraid, however, that neither the solicitous M. Soyer nor the “noble duchess” deterred Miss Nightingale from following what she felt to be the path of duty.
During this period she was much engaged in promoting schemes for the education and recreation of the convalescent soldiers and those forming the army of occupation. She formed classes, established little libraries or “reading huts,” which were supplied with books and periodicals sent by friends at home. Queen Victoria contributed literature and the Duchess of Kent sent Miss Nightingale a useful assortment of books for the men. All the reading huts were numerously and constantly attended, and Miss Nightingale remarked in her after report that the behaviour of the men was “uniformly quiet and well-bred.”
Lectures and schoolrooms were established for the men, both at Scutari and in the Crimea, by various officers and chaplains, and in these Miss Nightingale took a deep interest and was herself instrumental in establishing a café at Inkerman, to serve as a counter-attraction to the canteens where so much drunkenness prevailed. As she had ministered to the bodily needs of the men while sickness reigned, now she tried to promote their mental and moral good by providing them with rational means of occupation and amusement.
With solicitous womanly thought for the wives and mothers at home, Miss Nightingale had from the first encouraged the men to keep up communication with their families by supplying those in hospital with stationery, and stamps and writing materials were now at her instance supplied to the convalescent and other reading huts. In the first months of the war the men had been allowed to send any letters to Miss Nightingale’s quarters in the Barrack Hospital to be stamped, and many a reckless lad who had run away and enlisted was by her gentle persuasions prevailed upon to write home and report himself.
Often she herself had the painful duty of writing to wives and mothers to tell of the death of their dear ones, and several of these letters were published by the recipients in journals of the time, and are full of that thoughtful practical help which distinguished all the Lady-in-Chief’s efforts. She would send home little mementoes, the last book perhaps which the dying man had read, and would tell the bereaved women how to apply for their widow’s allowance, send papers for them to fill up, and in cases of doubtful identity would sift matters to the bottom to discover whether such or such a man was among the slain.
Another matter of concern with Miss Nightingale was to induce the men to send their pay home to their families. For this purpose she formed at Scutari an extempore money order office in which she received, four afternoons in the month, the money of any soldier who desired to send it home to his family. Each month about £1,000 was sent home in small sums of twenty or thirty shillings, which were, by Post Office orders obtained in England, sent to their respective recipients. “This money,” as Miss Nightingale says, “was literally so much rescued from the canteen and drunkenness.”
Following her initiative, the Government during the last months that the army remained in the East established money order offices at Constantinople, Scutari, Balaclava and headquarters, Crimea, and in the course of about six months, from January 30th to July 26th, 1856, no less than £71,000 was sent home by the men. “Who will say after this,” writes Miss Nightingale, “that the soldier must needs be reckless, drunken, or disorderly?” But it may be added that Miss Nightingale’s presence in the Crimea during the months which followed victory, when “Tommy” was in an exulting state of mind and ready to drink healths recklessly, and make each day an anniversary of the fall of Sebastopol, had a great moral effect on the men.
The Treaty of Peace was signed at Paris on March 30th, 1856, and the final evacuation of the Crimea took place on the following July 12th, on which day General Codrington formally gave up Sebastopol and Balaclava to the Russians. Not until all the hospitals were closed, and the last remnant of the British army was under sailing orders for home, did Florence Nightingale quit the scene of her labours. Just before leaving the Crimea, she was amazed to find that some fifty or sixty women, who had followed their husbands to the Crimea without leave, but had been allowed to remain because they were useful, were actually left behind before Sebastopol when their husbands’ regiments had sailed. The poor women gathered around Miss Nightingale’s hut in great distress, and she managed to induce the authorities to send them home on a British ship.
Miss Nightingale’s last act before leaving the Crimea was to order, at her own expense, the erection of a monument to the dead. It took the form of a monster white marble cross twenty feet high, and was placed on the peak of a mountain near the Sanatorium above Balaclava, and dedicated to the memory of the fallen brave, and to those sisters of her “Angel Band” who slept their last sleep in that far-away Eastern land. She caused it to be inscribed with the words,
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Gospodi pomilori nass.