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Florence Nightingale correspondence

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Creator: Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910

Date: 1856 - 1897 (bulk 1877-1897)

Level of Description: Sub-collection/group

Material Type: Manuscripts

Call Number: Menninger Historic Psychiatry Coll., Nightingale, Box 1

Unit ID: 223260

Abstract: These are original handwritten letters to and from Florence Nightingale, famous for being a pioneer English nurse. Topics include her health, her work and her interests in India and its irrigation systems, her mother's death, her correspondents' work and affairs (particularly Mr. Burton's children's institute), and other topics. Correspondents include, among others, Colonel James Fife, Alice Hepworth, F. H. Butler, and Mr. Burton. Also amongst the materials are dried flowers gathered from Cathcart's Hill in the Crimea. This correspondence is part of the historic psychiatry material in the Menninger Archives.

Summary: Handwritten letters to and from Florence Nightingale. Topics include her health, her work and her interests in India and its irrigation systems, her mother's death, her correspondents' work and affairs (particularly Mr. Burton's children's institute), and other topics. Correspondents include, among others, Colonel James Fife, Alice Hepworth, F. H. Butler, and Mr. Burton. Also amongst the materials are dried flowers gathered from Cathcart's Hill in the Crimea.

Space Required/Quantity: 0.50 cubic feet

Title (Main title): Florence Nightingale correspondence

Part of: Menninger Foundation Archives. Historic Psychiatry sub-collection.

Biography

Biog. Sketch (Full): Florence Nightingale, the daughter of William Edward and Frances Smith Nightingale, was born 12 May 1820 in Florence, Italy (her father named her after the city). She and her sister Parthenope grew up in England on their parents' estates.

Nightingale began visiting English hospitals in 1844; on a visit to Egypt in 1849-1850 she visited the Alexandria convent of the St. Vincent de Paul sisters and then in the summer of 1850 she visited the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth-am-Rhein in Germany. These visits reinforced to her that nursing was a necessary and honorable career, one in which women could excel. She began her own training as a nurse, and in 1853 became superintendent of the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in London.

In the spring of 1854 the Crimean War began, a conflict involving Russia against the British, French, Ottoman Empire, and the Sardinian kingdom. Nightingale volunteered her services to care for the wounded British soldiers; and in October of that year she and her team of volunteer nurses, trained by her, were sent to Scutari (now a part of Istanbul, Turkey). This team did not include Mary Seacole, who had volunteered her own services; Seacole went to Crimea and tended the wounded on her own.

The conditions Nightingale found when she arrived--poor hygiene, a cholera epidemic, overcrowding, lack of care for the wounded, etc.--shocked her. Initially receiving little interest or help from the military in bettering conditions for the wounded, Nightingale used her contacts and influence to bring about changes. A Sanitary Commission was sent from England to improve conditions, which dramatically lessened the death rates from such contagious diseases as cholera and typhus.

A Nightingale Fund was set up late in 1855, and by 1860 enough money had been raised to fund the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital, London (now a part of King's College London). Nurses who went through this educational program often worked in the workhouses, caring for the indigent poor.

Nightingale wrote two books to aid her reform efforts; she also wrote on women's rights. Her advice was sought by government officials during both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. She received the Order of Merit in 1907, the first woman to do so. An invalid for most of her later life, bedridden and blind by the end, Florence Nightingale died in London on 13 August 1910 at the age of 90.

Scope and Content

Portions of Collection Separately Described:


More separate components

Portions of Collection Not Separately Described:

  1. Transcripts of letters dated: Nov. 30, 1862; July 6, 1877; Feb. 2, 1878; Mar. 1, 1880; Mar. 10, 1893 (Box 1, folder 1)
  2. Nightingale, Florence Kansas University Medical Center (Box 1, folder 2)
  3. Nightingale, Florence April 7, 1856 (Box 1, folder 3)
  4. Nightingale, Florence March 28, 1857 (Box 1, folder 4)
  5. Nightingale, Florence November 30, 1862 (Box 1, folder 5)
  6. Nightingale, Florence July 4, 1877 (Box 1, folder 6)
  7. Nightingale, Florence November 29, 1877 (Box 1, folder 7)
  8. Nightingale, Florence December 22, 1877 (Box 1, folder 8)
  9. Nightingale, Florence February 4, 1878 (Box 1, folder 9)
  10. Nightingale, Florence February 4, 1878 (Box 1, folder 10)
More components

Locators:

Locator Contents
078-02-05-03   

Related Records or Collections

Associated materials: Florence Nightingale letters, Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center.
Auchincloss Florence Nightingale collection, Health Sciences Library Archives & Special Collections, Columbia University Medical Center.

Index Terms

Subjects

    India
    Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910 -- Correspondence
    Crimean War, 1853-1856
    Irrigation -- India
    Schools -- England -- London -- History -- 19th century

Creators and Contributors


Agency Classification:

    Organizations/Corporations. Menninger Foundation Archives. Historic Psychiatry. Individuals. Florence Nightingale.

Additional Information for Researchers

Holder of originals: Photocopies of letters, Florence Nightingale letters, Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center.