NEWSLETTERS
Newsletter 2012:2
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale · March 29, 2012
University of Virginia Visit, Randolph Lecture
I was pleased to receive an award
from the Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry and give the
Agnes Dillon Randolph Lecture at the University of Virginia, in
Charlottesville March 13 2012. I also met with a doctoral class
on Nightingale’s research methods. Thanks especially to Drs
Barbara Brodie and Arlene Keeling for the arrangements and kind
hospitality.
The award is named after a nursing pioneer, Agnes Dillon Randolph, granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, who was not only author of the Declaration of Independence and twice president of the United States but “father” of the University of Virginia, which he himself designed. The trip was an occasion also to visit his (again self-designed) Monticello, a splendid building on a hill overlooking the university. On the trip I also visited Richmond, VA, to see the capital (again designed by Jefferson) and Chimborazo Hospital, just outside Richmond, site of the largest Confederate hospital of the Civil War, and picked up some useful information on death rates at it. Chimborazo was a hut hospital, built in effect on Nightingale’s pavilion principle. Thanks to Joanne Peach for showing me around.
After Charlottesville I went to Baltimore MD, home of Johns Hopkins University, where the nursing was led by Isabel Hampton Robb, whom Nightingale mentored. Nightingale influenced the design of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, pictured on this page (a subject covered in Hospital Reform, the last volume of the Collected Works). Archivists and librarians kindly made the short trip very productive: there were new Nightingale letters to see, and excellent background information on the hospital and its designer, John Shaw Billings.
Drs Toshie Yamamoto, Shinobu Saito and Yoshiko Wazumi, nursing academics from Chiba University, Japan, were in Toronto March 25-27 to meet with me on their project, “Development of the Framework for Extracting the Positive Findings for Nurses in Modern Day from F. Nightingale’s Work about Social Reform.” It was exciting to talk with nurses who know Nightingale material well, and see the relevance of her principles for today. We will be continuing the discussions by Skype.
UK Research Trip
I will be in the UK March 31 to May 19 and will be happy to join in any Nightingale related activities. I will be giving the homily commemorating Nightingale at Derby Cathedral on May 12, Nightingale’s birthday. On May 11 I will join in on festivities organized by senior nurses at the Derby Royal Hospital, and look forward to meeting informally with nurses there.
Nightingale and Seacole: Nurse and Doctress is the title of the talk I am giving at the Florence Nightingale Museum on May 17. In it I plan to set out the fundamental differences in the work of these two women.
Recent newsletters have discussed the plans of Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal to have a massive bronze statue of her erected at Nightingale’s hospital, St Thomas’. The campaign to support this has circulated an enormous amount of misinformation, both about Nightingale (derogatory) and Seacole (sometimes crediting her with what Nightingale did). Promised consultation by the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust never happened, but indeed the trust is guilty of producing some of the most flagrantly false statements. Many thanks to Mrs Wendy Mathews for continuing to stand up for Nightingale on this.
Please note that neither she nor I oppose Seacole being honoured, for her own merits, at a suitable place for her, which the site of the Nightingale School is not. Seacole never nursed at St Thomas’ (nor anywhere in Britain) and never had anything to do with the hospital.
A website is now up with basic material on Seacole. More will be added, but anyone interested will find enough already there to explode the common misconceptions. See http://www.maryseacole.info/
Newsletter 2012:1
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale · February 24, 2012
Trip to Tokyo
My
trip to Japan in late November 2011 was wonderful;
many thanks to Dr Hitoe Kanai, her publisher husband
Yoshihiko Kominami, and many colleagues and friends
for invitations of great interest, professional,
cultural and social.
I gave 3 lectures (with PowerPoint and interpretation) at a conference of the Nightingale Komi Care Society, one each on Nightingale’s work (one overall on her vision and achievements, and one focusing on her nursing) and one addressing the attacks on her (fact, fiction and evidence, with lots of material refuting Hugh Small’s Avenging Angel).
At this conference also there was an excellent panel of healthcare professionals, who made interesting observations of how Nightingale’s theories are applied in practice. I met with the staff of the publishing company that puts out Nightingale’s work and major works on her in Japanese translation.
I gave two guest lectures to classes of nursing students, one each at Ariake University and the Tokyo Healthcare University.
Trips to Mt Fuji, Osaka, Kyoto and Nara were arranged, one on a national holiday so that visitors to the temples and gardens included school children in uniform. The weather was wonderful and the red maples splendid. These trips included nurses, so that there were great opportunities to talk shop on Nightingale.
Publications in the Collected Works
Volume 15, Wars and the War Office appeared on 2 December 2011. Volume 16, Hospital Reform, is at the typesetter’s, for publication later this year. It is somewhat different from the other volumes, requiring a great deal of research to fill in the blanks on Nightingale’s influence. In fact, Nightingale gave advice on a large number of hospitals, in Britain, Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Australia, but there are great gaps in the correspondence. For some hospitals, published sources at least gave some information.
While this volume closes the Collected Works, and of course pertains only to the 19th century, I had an uncanny feeling of the same issues arising. Nightingale was fighting hospital-acquired infections when they were not called that. The glossy brochures and websites on new hospitals, as for textbooks on hospital architecture, feature “environmental” touches, fresh air and sunlight, gardens, lawns and roof gardens!
Agnes Dillon Randolph Lecture/Award
The Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry is honouring me this year by inviting me to give their annual lecture, named in honour of Virginia nursing pioneer Agnes Dillon Randolph, a descendent of Thomas Jefferson. Previous honorees include Joan Lynaugh and Patricia D’Antonio (and an impressive list); Christine Hallett was last year’s honoree. The lecture is at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, March 13, where also I will be meeting with nursing graduate students.
UK Trip
My next trip to the UK on Nightingale work will be in April and May. I would be glad to meet with any interested researchers, and hear of any relevant events: lynnmcd@uoguelph.ca
Derby Cathedral Memorial
There will be a celebration of Nightingale’s life on May 12 at Derby Cathedral, with the participation of the Derby Royal Infirmary and the nursing schools of two universities, Nottingham and Derby, St Peter’s Church (which now houses a fine Nightingale stained glass window) and the Derby Hospital choir.
Derbyshire of course was home for the Nightingale family, and Nightingale herself not only sent trained nurses to the Derby Infirmary, but worked on the design of its new (in the late 19th century) building, recently replaced.
I will be giving the homily, and will hope to show how Nightingale’s faith informed her work as a nursing leader and public health reformer. I am looking forward to discussions with nurses on the trip.
Newsletter 2011:3
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale · November 14, 2011
The Good News: Next Volume Out December 6!
The 1060 pages of Florence Nightingale on Wars and the War Office are now being churned out. If you want it in your university or college library, let it know. (They do not order volumes otherwise.) Note: the UBC and McGill libraries still do not have the major volumes on nursing, 12 and 13, The Nightingale School and Extending Nursing, published in 2009, yet they have nursing faculties and Nightingale connections--anyone interested?
Peer reviews for volume 16, Hospital Reform, have come back, mercifully supportive. The last—and this is the last peer review for the last volume—was the best ever. The reviewer evidently appreciated my finding material no one else had. This volume required quite different research from the others, to fill in the blanks on Nightingale’s considerable influence on actual hospital design.
Pat Smedley, former chair of Friends of the Florence Nightingale Museum, gave a terrific keynote address to the inaugural International Conference of Perianesthesia Nurses in Toronto October 4, assuming the identity of an 1878 probationer at St Thomas’, and regaling the audience with a thoroughly accurate portrayal of Nightingale nursing of the time. Congratulations.
Orthopedic Nurses: On 25 October I gave a lecture on Nightingale to a conference in Toronto of the Canadian Orthopedic Nurses’ Association. Thanks to Bruce Weber, RN, for the arrangements.
The Bad News: The onslaught against Nightingale continues. Anyone willing to send a letter to Sir Hugh Taylor, chair of the Guy’s St Thomas’ NHS Trust, on why the Seacole memorial should not be placed at St Thomas’ please do so. Mine went by email with a paper copy a month later requesting an acknowledgment, and preferably a reply to my requests for evidence. I have received no reply to either, nor have other people who wrote. Wendy Mathew has led to defending Nightingale on this matter.
As explained in the previous newsletter, none of us objects to a Seacole memorial (a 3-metre bronze statue), but to its placement in the courtyard of St Thomas’ Hospital, with a tribute explaining that Seacole gave her life’s work to the early establishment of nursing, which she did not, and never claimed to.
Sir Hugh Taylor, chair
GST Foundation Trust
4th floor Gassiott House
Westminster Bridge Rd
London SE1 7EH
England
hugh.taylor@gstt.nhs.uk
An Irish radio station did an hour “history” program on Nightingale on October 23, in which I was a participant, with holistic nursing leader Barbara Dossey, the director of the Florence Nightingale Museum, Natasha McEnroe, and Irish nursing historian Dr Theresa Meehan. All the incoming phone calls and texts were hostile to Nightingale. There were no questions about what Nightingale herself did for Irish nursing. Natasha McEnroe, who previously was director of the Samuel Johnson Museum, is amazed by the level of hostility she now sees--it does not happen with other historical people, she says.
Contact: I would be glad to get an email from anyone on Nightingale work, especially anyone willing to help in defending her: lynnmcd@uoguelph.ca
Back to the Good News: I am off to Tokyo to speak at a nursing conference (November 21), sponsored by the Japan Nursing Association, and the following week at two nursing faculties: Tokyo Ariake University of Medical and Health Sciences, and Tokyo Healthcare University. I am very much looking forward to the trip, and the opportunity to meet with Japanese nursing leaders taking part in the conference. Japanese nurses are numerous and well organized, and Nightingale still is paid attention in nursing education. The conference has both lectures on Nightingale’s work, and the ongoing attack on her, and discussion by an impressive panel of experts. Thanks to Dr Hitoe Kanei, dean of nursing at Tokyo Ariake University, for arrangements.
Newsletter 2011:2
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale · October 3, 2011
Volume 15: Wars and the War Office
Volume 15 is now in production. At right you can see a mockup of a proposed cover for this volume.
Public lectures and papers given
June 22, 2011: (at the end of my last research trip to the UK, and with thanks to Alison Macfarlane for making arrangements): “Nightingale on Nursing and Health Care: Vision, Achievements and Relevance,” to City University London, Whitechapel.
Sept. 25, 2011: “What Would Florence Nightingale Say about Canada’s Health," to the Inter-Church Health Ministries, Pickering, Ontario.
BBC Attack on Nightingale
Several informal meetings were held during my spring research trip to the U.K. to organize a response and alternative proposal to the BBC’s two highly hostile and erroneous films on Nightingale, incorrectly labeled “documentaries.” See the letter sent to the chair of the BBC Trust, co-signed by Tom Keighley, Alison Macfarlane, Eileen Magnello and Susan McGann. The response was dismal, the BBC claiming that its programs involved “a broad range of sources,” hardly! “giving a broad range of opinions,” in fact mainly between demeaning and diminishing.
Experts with positive views of Nightingale are routinely excluded. (Presumably we are to be blamed for “hagiography,” but I note that the Collected Works volumes all have to survive anonymous peer review, which the critics’ never did.) It happens that those of us who read her the most are impressed with Nightingale’s contribution--not the trendy view the BBC wants to convey.
A complaint to the BBC Trust got a tough luck response: use the regular complaints procedure. The Nursing Standard, however, did at least give the issue some coverage. There will be developments. For background, see this page.
Statistician Eileen Magnello and I met with Anne Marie Rafferty (then outgoing dean of the Nightingale School at King’s College Hospital), Rosemary Wall (also at King’s) and Natasha McEnroe, the new director of the Florence Nightingale Museum about the attack on Nightingale. I have offered to debate Hugh Small and anyone else. Anne Marie Rafferty is in on it too! When there is anything arranged I will report. (I have also told the BBC I would debate Hugh Small and any of their “experts” at any time.)
Tokyo Trip
I will be in Tokyo in November to speak on Nightingale, invited by Dr Hiteo Kanei, dean of the Nursing School, and Dr Masuko Hayano of Tokyo Healthcare University. Dr Kanei, with her interpreter, visited in Toronto last spring to make arrangements. Japan has an enormous organization of nurses and a long and deep appreciation of Nightingale and her work, which is actually taught in the regular nursing curriculum there. Many books by and on Nightingale have been translated into Japanese. My short book, Florence Nightingale at First Hand, is being translated.
The motivation for inviting me was the arrival of a Japanese translation of Hugh Small’s attack on Nightingale (also featured in those two BBC films). I have been asked to address his amazing accusations, which I will refute, chapter and verse.
Meanwhile, a storm has come up in London with the proposal to erect a 3 metre bronze statue of Mary Seacole in the courtyard of St Thomas’ Hospital, the very site of Nightingale’s nursing school and the main locus of her 40 years’ plus contribution to nursing. The statue--the visual replacement of Nightingale as the symbol of nursing--is the logical end of nurses’ years of neglect of Nightingale and her work, and the actual attacks made on her in books and TV films.
Certainly Seacole deserves recognition for her contribution, but it was not at St Thomas’ or to British nursing (she was trained in traditional herbal remedies and called herself a “doctress”). The misinformation put out as “history” astonishes. If anyone can provide any relevant documentation of any work by Seacole in British nursing, please let me know. See my letter to the board here.
Florence Nightingale Museum
I had (yet another) disturbing visit to the Museum on my last research trip. The good news is that there is a new and capable director, with excellent background, Natasha McEnroe--to whom all the best. The negative or trivializing portrayal of Nightingale herself, however, sadly continues. (You can even buy a video of the BBC’s latest attack on Nightingale.) I have made recommendations to the director and hope to have some positive results to report before long.
New Reviews
Vol. 11: Suggestions for Thought
- Fenwick, Gillian, in University of Toronto Quarterly 80,2 (Spring 2011):361-62.
Florence Nightingale at First Hand
- Glass, Laurie K., in Nursing History Review 20 (2012):222-24
- Elliott, Jayne, in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 66,3 (July 2011):403-06.
Newsletter 2011:1
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale · March 23, 2011
U.K. Trip May-June 2011
I will be in the U.K., mainly London, for May and June to work on the project, and would be glad to know of any Nightingale events that might be of interest. Please contact me at: lynnmcd@uoguelph.ca.
I would be very glad to meet with anyone who wants to discuss using Nightingale material in nursing, or who wishes to pursue the idea of establishing a Nightingale network.
On the project itself, vol. 15, Wars and the War Office, is in production for publication later this year. My short paperback (under 200 pages) is apparently now available at the Florence Nightingale Museum: Florence Nightingale at First Hand.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
More Nightingale bashing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: The ODNB has yet another entry which attacks Nightingale's work in the course of praising another person's: Elizabeth Baigent, "Smythe (née Beaufort), Emily Anne, Viscountess Strangford." Viscountess Strangford worked with Florence Lees on the establishment of district nursing and was enormously active in hospital work in the Balkan Wars. (She appears in Wars and the War Office, vol. 15 of the CWFN.) Strangford also promoted voluntary nursing, by unpaid ladies.
Her two publications on nursing consist of a 17-page Hospital Training for Ladies: An Appeal to the Hospital Boards in England, 1874, which advocates part-time training for ladies, who might then nurse part-time, unpaid, and The Soldier's Wife as his Nurse, 1880, which recommends (apparently--I could not find a copy) that army wives be trained to look after their husbands.
Nightingale of course promoted trained, paid nurses, whether men or women, but not wives. Nightingale also worried about unpaid ladies undermining salaries for the vast majority of women who needed to support themselves and sometimes a family. (Well-off ladies should take the salary and donate it.)
This ODNB entry has Nightingale opposing the idea of army wives looking after their husbands, instead of regular nurses, because Mary Stanley "to whom she was antipathetic," had proposed it, although, by 1880, Nightingale had been promoting trained professional nursing for the army, navy and civilian life for over 20 years. The entry further states that Strangford's "reputation eclipsed even that of Florence Nightingale in the eyes of some contemporaries" (no names given). But her "name fell into obscurity," and again Nightingale is named. Florence Lees's contribution to district nursing is also slighted in this entry, where it is described as having been "probably more important" than Strangford's.
Query to nursing historians: is there any evidence for these statements? Is Strangford taken seriously as a nursing leader? Has anyone seen a copy of The Soldier's Wife as his Nurse?
BBC Film: The Beauty of Diagrams
The BBC broadcast a film on Nightingale's famous rose chart in 2010 (a detail from the full 1858 diagram appears at right). It refreshingly differs from its two other films on Nightingale in not bashing her, and indeed praises her statistical work. The film contains a number of factual errors, but unlike those of the other films they would seem to be from bad research, not invention. The film does bash Dr William Farr, who produced the rose chart and other area charts for Nightingale--it describes him as disapproving of such charts! The film even credits Nightingale with saving "millions of lives" with her vivid chart, which spurred people to action to bring in sanitary reforms. (Maybe she did?) Mark Bostridge gave an excellent interview in the film. But the film omitted a major point Nightingale tried to make with her charts, that the great decline in death rates occurred after the arrival of the sanitary commission, on account of its work.
Rosalind Nash Interview
In 1937 Nightingale's cousin Rosalind Nash gave a description of her personal relationship with Nightingale in a radio broadcast. Many thanks to Pam Rivers, Cromford Bridge House, for transcribing the interview and allowing it to go onto the CWFN website. You can read it by following the link here.
Thanks to John Bibby for tracking down the pamphlet that Nightingale saw advertised outside York Minster, on a visit there in 1852, Reasons for Leaving the Church of England. Nightingale bought a copy and had "some very spicy and refreshing conversation with a red-hot convert." (In European Travels (7:692-94)). Bibby has a link on his own website to the pamphlet available for any other would-be converts to Roman Catholicism.
Newsletter 2010:6
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale · Nov. 28, 2010
Nightingale Centenary Events:
By now, the events commemorating the centenary of Nightingale’s death have all happened. Let me flag especially the many events held in Derbyshire, near the Nightingale home, Lea Hurst. (see picture at right)
The Derby Nightingale Association put on a whole summer programme of events, with walks, visits and displays. A service was held at Derby Cathedral on the actual day (and hour) of Nightingale’s death, August 13, the address given by the Bishop of Derby, the Rt Rev Alastair Redfern. (more info can be found here).
Thanks to John and Pam Rivers, of the Derbyshire Association, for their (and many people’s work) and the Rivers for some new photographs (see picture album on the CWFN website or browse thumbnails of the new photos at the foot of this newsletter).
A commemoration evensong service was held on September 26 at the Cathedral Church of St George, in Kingston, Ontario, organized by Deva Marie Beck.
On November 10 2010 Sioban Nelson, dean of the Bloomberg School of Nursing, University of Toronto, hosted a launch of her co-edited book, with Anne Marie Rafferty, dean of the Nightingale School of Nursing, King’s College, London, Notes on Nightingale: The Influence of a Nursing Icon (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2010). Two Toronto contributors were present: Carol Helmstadter and myself.
My own trip to the UK recently finished included a number of commemoration events. Thanks to the various academics for the invitations and enjoyable arrangements for the six talks I gave:
Sept. 29 2010 “Nightingale’s Nursing,” lecture to the Nursing History Group, King’s College, London (Drs Anne Marie Rafferty, dean, and Rosemary Wall, research fellow)
Oct. 7 2010 “Florence Nightingale: Statistics for Saving Lives,” keynote address to the Royal Statistical Society, London (Alison Macfarlane, FRSS)
Oct. 13 2010 “Florence Nightingale on India,” colloquium, School of Oriental and African Studies, London (Dr Manjeet Ramgotra)
Oct. 14 2010 “Florence Nightingale’s Religious Motivation and Social Reform,” lecture, Christchurch, University of Oxford (Regius Professor Nigel Biggar)
Oct. 21 2010 “Florence Nightingale: The Enduring Legacy,” Chester Literature Festival (Dr Emma Rees)
Oct. 22 2010 “Florence Nightingale: One Hundred Years Later,” Chesterfield, UNESCO World Heritage Site Lecture (Derby Nightingale Association)
City of Derby mini-gallery:
Did you know that the city of Derby has three statues of Nightingale? There is a Nightingale St., a Nightingale pub and a Nightingale Fish Bar.
But the original Nightingale Home for Nurses is now boarded up (photo of façade, left, with detail of statue, right. Clicking the thumbnail will take you to a larger photo on the CWFN website.)
One statue -- on London Road -- remains in fine form.
Newsletter 2010:5
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale; September 8, 2010
Centenary of Nightingale’s Death
August 13, 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Nightingale’s death. Conferences too numerous to mention are going on all over, and there are many new publications. Congratulations to organizers, authors and editors!
For the conference on September 14-15 at Windsor , sponsored by the American Association for the History of Nursing and the European Nursing History Group, I have sent a short contribution to the debate on Nightingale’s influence, which can be seen in the "Nursing and Health Care" section of the CWFN website. Christine Hallett, the conference organizer, will present it on my behalf (with a recording and a PowerPoint).
In the Collected Works, Volume 14, The Crimean War is in final page proofs and visuals are almost done.
Trip to U.K.
My next trip to the U.K. will be September 20 through October, with a number of interesting speaking engagements:
- September 29: a seminar to a nursing history group, at King’s College, London, Waterloo campus, organized by Dr Rosemary Wall, on Nightingale’s nursing, with a discussion organized by Dr Anne-Marie Rafferty, on integrating Nightingale material into contemporary teaching
- October 7: to the Royal Statistical Society, London, Florence Nightingale: Statistics to Save Lives
- October 13: at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Nightingale on India: Health Care, Women and Independence
- October 21: Chester Literary Festival, Florence Nightingale As Seen a Century Later
- October 22: Chesterfield, Derwent Valley World Heritage Site, Nightingale: The Enduring Legacy
Otherwise I will be doing archive work for the last volumes, and will be happy to meet with authors and students interested in Nightingale research.
Canadian Journal of Nursing Research
Dr Laurie Gottlieb, professor of nursing at McGill University, and editor of the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, has an editorial on my work and the Collected Works project. The issue also lists 42 recent publications on Nightingale. Might I say that the editorial is flattering? and makes some good points for nurses. This is a welcome breakthrough in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. Now if it (and other nursing journals) would review some of the volumes! And if word about the project could get out to the wider nursing world, that would be a great help, too.
Thesis
Jennifer Cornick is doing an M.A. thesis in philosophy at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, on the connections between Nightingale and John Stuart Mill, using material from the Collected Works, which is as it should be!
Archives
Congratulations to the Reynolds Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham, for putting their excellent collection of letters on their website.
Newsletter 2010:4
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale; July 14, 2010
Herewith a (brief) summer update on the project. Volume 15, Wars and the War Office has gone into production, for publication in 2011. I am now working on Volume 16, Hospital Reform, the last in the series. Amazingly, the end is in site!
Congratulations to Jean-Jacques Suurmond, on the publication of a new book on Nightingale’s spirituality, in Dutch, to be presented on September 10 at the Florence Nightingale Institut in the Netherlands --
Jean-Jacques Suurmond, De Spiritualiteit van Florence Nightingale, Meinema.
Congratulations to Sioban Nelson and Anne Marie Rafferty on the publication of their edited, peer-reviewed book (a slim 172 pages) -- Notes on Nightingale: The Influence and Legacy of a Nursing Icon. Ithaca NY: ILR Press (an imprint of Cornell University Press). Available in paperback and hard cover. Carol Helmstadter’s article on Nightingale’s Crimean War work is a particularly fine piece of research, a significant addition to the literature.
Helping the Americans on Health Care
Lynn McDonald, "What Would Nightingale Say About Healthcare in the U.S. Today?" in Nursing Spectrum, June 29, 2010. http://news.nurse.com/article/20100629/NATIONAL02/100628012/-1/frontpage
Website
There are some new pictures in the “Picture Album.” The picture at right is of Embley Park, the Nightingale home in Wellow, Hampshire, the gift of Hampshire Collegiate Institute.
Pictures welcome, especially on hospitals Nightingale was connected with. Thanks to Janet Whitehead for a picture of Lincoln County Hospital, now about to tumble to the ground, but a model hospital in its day.
Information on new letters always welcome. There are more out there, hidden away in attics and hospital archives.
Noted in the last newsletter
Louise Penner’s new book, Victorian Medicine and Social Reform: Florence Nightingale among the Novelists, does just what I have hoped authors would do with the Collected Works material. Penner used the published volumes, and pre-publication material I gave her electronically, for a new analysis of Nightingale’s work and influence. She looked at what influenced Nightingale and whom she influenced. She developed some interesting interpretations of Nightingale’s writing, especially on India and Poor Law reform, comparing it with that of the “Condition of England” novelists.
The result is a very original book, of interest both to people whose focus is history or social science, and to specialists in 19th century English literature.
Newsletter 2010:3
Lynn McDonald, editor, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale; May 26, 2010
I am back from nearly three months’ work in London, mainly at the British Library, Wellcome Trust and London Metropolitan Archives. It was great to meet with other Nightingale researchers and authors.
Hugh Small hosted a dinner in March, with India expert Dr Jharna Gourlay and Tom and Amanda Keighley (both are both priests and nurses). Hugh also showed us a new acquisition of a Nightingale book and wonderful covering letter.
I hosted a gathering with Dr Susan McGann (archivist, Royal College of Nurses), Dr Christine Hallett (nursing historian, University of Manchester) and Hugh Small. This second meeting was focused on following up on the bad coverage of Nightingale by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the BBC (it has three films now with inaccurate, nasty coverage of Nightingale).
I also had an excellent meeting with biographer Mark Bostridge (at the good old British Library) and one also with nursing historian Dr Robert Dingwall. The trip included a call at Continuum Publishing, publisher of my new (short) book, Florence Nightingale at First Hand, and a meeting with its director, Robin Baird-Smith.
May 12 Celebration of Nightingale’s Birthday
The Florence Nightingale Foundation put on its annual celebration at Westminster Abbey on May 12, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu giving the address. Tom Keighley was honoured with a role as carrier of the Nightingale lamp. The occasion also marked the retirement of its director, Mary Spink, and the appointment of Dr Elizabeth Robb as her successor. (A thank you to Mary Spink for years of dedicated work and all good wishes to Elizabeth Robb as she takes on the challenge.)
Very special this year was the dedication of a “Nightingale Chapel,” formerly the “Nurses’ Chapel,” dedicated to nurses after World War II. The service of dedication, 8:00 a.m. on May 12, was conducted by the dean of the abbey, the Very Reverend John Hall, who showed a fine understanding not only of Nightingale’s faith, but her high goals of a new, trained, profession of nursing. Thanks to Tom Keighley for doing the background work to make this possible. When next in London, visit the Nightingale Chapel at the abbey.
New Books
Congratulations to authors of two new books on Nightingale (both of which used material from the Collected Works). For Louise Penner, I provided material from my transcription data base and files of people with whom Nightingale corresponded, and whose books she read, bought and gave to libraries. (I make this offer to other scholars as well, to provide unpublished data base letters and information pertinent to their research.) I was pleased to be able to attend the launch of Anthony Sattin’s book, at a fine book store in Marylebone High Street.
Louise Penner, Victorian Medicine and Social Reform: Florence Nightingale among the Novelists. New York: Macmillan Palgrave 2010 (193 page)
Anthony Sattin, A Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt. London: Hutchinson 2010 (291 pages)
On the project itself:
Volume 15, War Office and Other Wars, has gone through peer review, and will be going into production soon. Volume 14, Crimean War, is at the typesetter’s.
Thanks to Professor Rainer Schlösser, of the German Red Cross, for providing a scan of (to me new) Nightingale letter.
The first review of my Florence Nightingale at First Hand came out in the Church Times, by the Reverend Dame Sarah Mulally (now a priest, formerly a high ranking nurse), “The lady’s not for malingering” April 23 2010; the Church Times also published my reply May 7.
Next London trip
Two very nice speaking invitations have prompted me to come to the UK in the autumn (which will also give the opportunity to do archival work not finished on the last trip). I will be speaking on Nightingale and statistics at a meeting early October of the Royal Statistical Society in London. (Nightingale was the first woman member.
October 22 is the (inaugural) World Heritage Site Lecture, on Nightingale, in Chesterfield. The World Heritage Site, designated in 2001, includes the Derwent Valley where the Nightingale home, Lea Hurst, is located. The site showcases the industrial revolution in the area, a subject of great interest to Nightingale. The organizers have included a wonderful visit to Cromford, near Lea Hurst, and the home of a favourite relative, great aunt Evans.
Newsletter 2010:2
Report from London March 30, by Lynn McDonald
Hampshire and Embley Park
Many thanks to the principal, Hector MacDonald, and history teacher Dr Russ Foster, for all their arrangements for my visit March 17 to Hampshire Collegiate School, which is at the Nightingale family home, Embley Park. I gave a lecture March 17, and had the great pleasure of seeing the splendid house, sitting in the old drawing room and walking over the grounds. The school now has 800 pupils, in a new building discreetly located so as not to detract from the beauty of the old house. The outside view of it is disturbed only by the addition of two (fine, delicate) wrought-iron fire escapes. The upstairs rooms are used by boarders. The school gave me a fine picture of the old house, which will be on display in Toronto at the end of this trip.
The photo to the right is how it looks now, not the artist's version!
Also while in Hampshire I tried to see the old Winchester Infirmary (the Royal Hampshire County Hospital), built according to Nightingale’s principles—she corrected the plans numerous times and agitated for a complete new building on a new site—which she got. Many new buildings have been added to the site, but the building put up in the 1860s is still there and in use. Alas, thanks to a virus going around hospitals in the region visitors were discouraged, and frankly warned off with the threat of diarrhea and vomiting! (I did not go in.)
Lincoln
On a visit to Lincoln I had the chance to see the old Lincoln County Infirmary, whose plans Nightingale went over and corrected. That lovely building is now boarded up and looks likely to be demolished.
London
A meeting is to be held in London of people interested in Nightingale and coverage of her, notably in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. This will at Hugh Small’s April 28. If anyone else who would like to take part is in the area, please let me know. lynnmcd@uoguelph.ca
Otherwise the work goes well at the British Library, the Wellcome Library and the Royal Institute of British Architects (that for the last volume of the series, Hospital Reform).
Hugh Small writes:
I hope you might be interested in my article summarising the history of Nightingale’s lost diaries, which I have posted on my web site in the hope that it might prompt their discovery. Also my online version of Sue Goldie’s Calendar of the Letters of Florence Nightingale may be of some use. My intention is to make the web site (see www.hugh-small.co.uk) a repository of serious research on FN. Feeds are available to inform people by email or RSS when new material is posted, which I hope will be about once a month in this centenary year.
Newsletter 2010:1
January 28, 2010 Update
Nightingale letters continue to come to light, the latest one at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Thanks to the hospital for putting it online.
The source list on the CWFN website has been updated. Have a look! http://www.uoguelph.ca/~cwfn/sources/index.html.
The search is on now for missing letters about hospital reform, for volume 16. Nightingale often commented on hospital plans, severely in most cases one suspects. No wonder architects did not want her letters to them to be read. But references remain in correspondence, e.g., that she had sent 8 pages, or 12 pages, on such-and-such hospital to the architect. Any help in locating such letters would be greatly appreciated.
I will be in the UK for all of March-April 2010, mainly working in London, accessible as usual through my university email: lynnmcd@uoguelph.ca.
People have been asking me when I will write a short book (usually they say a biography) on Nightingale. No biography is in mind, but there will be an announcement soon about a short book on Nightingale, of course based on the material gathered for the Collected Works.
There is more on the strange case of Monica Baly’s entry on Nightingale in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Thanks to Hugh Small for alerting me to the existence of Baly’s original article, and correspondence on changes to it, at the Royal College of Nursing Archives in Edinburgh (and to both him and archivist Dr Susan McGann for sending scans). Several scholars protested the inaccuracies of the entry when it appeared in 2004. The ODNB is a highly regarded source and frequently used--available both in print and online through libraries. Hugh Small and others (myself included) got it to make some changes (in the online edition) to remove gross inaccuracies, but the entry remains largely what it was when it first appeared. Baly wrote it at the end of her career, when she had come to accept much of the negativity of F.B. Smith’s Reputation and Power and left behind her own earlier, very positive, interpretation. F.B. Smith’s book is cited no less than 16 times in the entry, far more than the accurate and comprehensive E.T. Cook.
The then editor of the ODNB, H.C.G. Matthew, appears as the junior author of the entry, for having made changes to it after Baly’s death. Baly was specifically told that there was no “need to be defensive about the ‘shortcomings’ of a woman such as Nightingale.” Yet she had condemned the Nightingale School as a failure, and described Nightingale’s methods as ruthless. (One wonders if requests for “shortcomings” were made of the writers of the highly flattering entry on Charles Darwin.) Having dismissed the school, Baly simply did not discuss its work or achievements. A very fat Volume 12 in the Collected Works, The Nightingale School, shows what it did in its first 40 years of operation, and an equally fat Volume 13, Extending Nursing, shows its influence worldwide. Material is not lacking.
Baly was also asked by the ODNB to discuss F.B. Smith explicitly, although the editors did not want her “to take the F.B. Smith approach.” In fact her qualified approval of Smith was removed, that he had started “with the premise that Nightingale was motivated by the urge for power,” crediting him with producing “evidence to support it,” failing to mention that his cited facts often do not bear out what he claimed for them, and sometimes said the opposite. This was replaced with lavish praise: “Barry Smith’s striking study (1982) stripped away the iconic aspects of the Nightingale legend to examine the remarkable network of manipulation (mostly by letter) by which she sought to impose her will and achieve her objectives.” Again there is no mention of Smith’s factual errors. I have asked the current ODNB editor, Dr Lawrence Goldman, to correct these errors.
In thanking Hugh Small for the crucial information I should mention that I do not agree with his interpretation of Nightingale’s Crimean War work, and will show why in volume 14, The Crimean War. Our differences are those of scholars and our sources (mine so much more extensive!). I very much appreciate him as an honourable and helpful colleague in the work of making Florence Nightingale known.
Newsletter 2009:3
An update from Lynn McDonald, project director: June 5 2009
Florence Nightingale's Suggestions for Thought now available!
Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought has intrigued readers from feminist-philosopher J.S. Mill (who used it in his On the Subject of Women) to the latest generation of women’s activists. Although selections from this long work have been published, Lynn McDonald is the first editor to work through the numerous surviving drafts of Nightingale’s writing and present it as a complete volume. Suggestions for Thought contains two early attempted novels, draft sermons, and a lengthy fictional dialogue featuring St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, the American evangelical Jacob Abbott, and British agnostic Harriet Martineau (with cameo appearances by Protestant reformer John Calvin and the poet Shelley) all against an unnamed “M.S.”
The most famous section of Suggestions for Thought is the essay “Cassandra,” famous as a rant against the family for stifling women’s aspirations. Here the printed text is shown with the original novel draft alongside. McDonald’s introductions to each section provide historical context and Nightingale’s later views of the work.
Lynn McDonald "Florence Nightingale and European wars: from the Crimean to the Franco-Prussian War." in a Dutch journal, Leidschrift Historisch Tijdscrift. 2007. a special issue on European wars.