She gained practical experience in the hospitals of London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, spent three years with the Sœurs de Charité at Paris, in the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserworth on the Rhine, and in the hospitals at Berlin and Brussels, and in 1850, upon her return to England, had undertaken the management of a home for sick governesses in London. She was also engaged with Sir Robert Raikes in organizing “ragged schools” and in segregating diseased children who attended them. In the meantime she had established a training school for nurses—the first in England.
She thus had ten years of preparation for the work she was called to perform in the Crimea, and within ten days after receiving her invitation from the secretary of war, was on her way to Constantinople with a staff of thirty-eight trained nurses, including fourteen Anglican Sisters and ten Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy. All of them were volunteers and among them were three ladies of noble families.
Upon their arrival at Constantinople, Miss Nightingale and her nurses at once took charge of the hospitals at Scutari, the suburb which occupies the opposite bank of the Bosphorus, and there they found 3,000 diseased and wounded Englishmen lying on the ground, without any comforts, and lacking actual necessities. They had no proper food or medical attendance, and the few surgeons who were trying to relieve their distress were without instruments or drugs or bandages, or even the commonest medical supplies. Hundreds died from sheer exhaustion, from lack of nourishment and ordinary attention, and as Miss Nightingale herself described the scene: “Neglect, mismanagement and disease had united to render the situation one of unparalleled hideousness.”
Within a few days Miss Nightingale had in operation a kitchen capable of feeding eight hundred men daily, and a laundry which was ample to wash the linen that had never been changed until she came. With a daring that few men would have shown, she ordered warehouses broken open by force and confiscated supplies that were needed by her patients. Her courage, her zeal, and her determination brought order out of chaos, and a few weeks after her arrival the hospitals at Scutari were in excellent condition.
As is usual in such cases, Miss Nightingale was the continual object of attack from malicious, jealous, and uncharitable people. But this made no difference in her work or her influence, and when she received an autograph letter from Queen Victoria conveying her congratulations and expressions of gratitude and sympathy she felt sure of her position.
More nurses kept coming from England, and several other hospitals were established on the Bosphorus. Then Miss Nightingale went to the Crimea and organized at Balaklava and vicinity the work I have already described. In addition to hospitals, she established a series of reading tents and recreation huts for the diversion of the soldiers, and sent to England for books, periodicals, and newspapers. She set up neat coffee houses as a counter attraction to the liquor saloons; she started lecture courses, opened school-rooms, and upon her own responsibility founded a bank where the soldiers could deposit their pay and secure money orders for transmission home. More than $350,000 passed through her hands in that way before the end of the war.
After the evacuation of the Crimea by the British troops, Florence Nightingale returned to England. Her last act in the Crimea was the dedication of a cross, twenty feet high, upon the crest of a crag overlooking her hospital. The only inscription was these words:
LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US
Upon her return to England, Miss Nightingale received from Queen Victoria a beautiful jewel designed by Prince Albert, accompanied by an autograph letter; the sultan of Turkey sent her a diamond bracelet, valued at $100,000, and she was overwhelmed with gifts, testimonials, and tributes of every sort from municipalities, corporations, benevolent societies, religious associations, and individuals. A fund in cash, amounting to about $240,000, raised as a gift to her, was at her request devoted to the establishment of a training school for nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital. She was a guest of the queen at Balmoral, she received the “freedom of the city” from nearly every town of importance in England, and was honoured in every possible way by every class of people, from royalty to the clubs of workingmen and women.
She was the only woman who ever received the Order of Merit; she was the only woman who was ever made a member of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem; Queen Victoria bestowed upon her the Red Cross; the city of London conferred upon her “the freedom of the city,” an honour enjoyed by only one other woman—the late Baroness Burdette-Coutts. For twenty years or more her birthday has always been recognized by an autograph letter of congratulations from the queen or the king of England, and by resolutions of congratulations from numerous organizations throughout the world.