(3) Would you or some one of my Committee write to Lady Stratford to say, “This is not a lady but a real Hospital Nurse,” of me? “And she has had experience.”
My uncle went down this morning to ask my father and mother's consent.
Would there be any use in my applying to the Duke of Newcastle for his authority?
Believe me, dearest, in haste, ever yours, F. Nightingale.
Perhaps it is better to keep it quite a private thing, and not apply to Govt. qua Govt.
This letter was posted on Saturday. Mr. Herbert had left London to spend Sunday at Bournemouth, and thence, unaware of the communication which was on its way to him from Miss Nightingale, he addressed the following letter to her:—
(Sidney Herbert to Miss Nightingale.) Bournemouth, October 15 [1854]. Dear Miss Nightingale—You will have[152] seen in the papers that there is a great deficiency of nurses at the Hospital at Scutari.
The other alleged deficiencies, namely of medical men, lint, sheets, etc., must, if they have really ever existed, have been remedied ere this, as the number of medical officers with the army amounted to one to every 95 men in the whole force, being nearly double what we have ever had before, and 30 more surgeons went out 3 weeks ago, and would by this time, therefore, be at Constantinople. A further supply went on Thursday, and a fresh batch sail next week.
As to medical stores, they have been sent out in profusion; lint by the ton weight, 15,000 pairs of sheets, medicine, wine, arrowroot in the same proportion; and the only way of accounting for the deficiency at Scutari, if it exists, is that the mass of stores went to Varna, and was not sent back when the army left for the Crimea; but four days would have remedied this. In the meanwhile fresh stores are arriving.
But the deficiency of female nurses is undoubted, none but male nurses having ever been admitted to military hospitals.