Two Nurses..... One War

For generations of British schoolchildren Florence Nightingale was simply know as the 'Lady of the Lamp', a young middle class woman who led a team of nurses into the hell that was the Crimean war.

Over the past few years however those with a politically correct bent of mind have attempted to downgrade her efforts and to replace her instead with those of Mary Seacole, some even claiming that Mary Seacole was the real 'Lady of the Lamp'.

There is no doubt that Mary Seacole played her part in easing the suffering of the soldiers, but that doesn't mean that Florence 'rode on her skirt tails' as some would have us beleive. Mary was born in Jamacia the daughter of a Scottish soldier and a Jamacian mother, from whom she learnt her nursing skills.

In 1854 she travelled to London and applied to the war office to be sent to the Crimea, she was refused permission to do so, but undaunted she travelled there at her own expense and set up the British Hotel for wounded soldiers near Balaclava .

In the same year Florence Nightingale arrived at Scutari to take charge of the Barrack Hospital with a party of thirty eight volunteers. The hospital was filthy, running alive with various vermin, and in her alloted quarters Florence discovered the decomposing corpse of a Russian officer, and the wounded men lay in overcrowded and insanitory conditions.

One of the first things Florence did was to order 200 scrubbing brushes to clean the wards, and the patients clothes and bedding was replaced or at least washed. Florence's veiws on cleanliness were paramount, a thing that seems lacking in hospitals of the present day.

However not everyone was pleased with the arrival of a team of nurses, and to Sir John Hall, Head of Medical Services from 1854-56, who seemed to have a problem with Florence in particular. In his diary of the time which has come up for sale today he describes her a "petticoat imperieuse in the Medical imperio!" for we have to remember that in his time women of Florence's class didn't go out to work, let alone in such a dangerous situation as the Crimean War presented.

What seems to have outraged Hall more than anything, though, was the authority with which Nightingale went over his head to order in supplies - "for whatever she thought proper, without any reference whatsoever to the Medical authorities."

This was not something he was prepared to let go: "I have declined sanctioning [them]," he continues, "and shall contrive to do so until positively ordered to the contrary. He took particular exception to an order Miss Nightingale had placed for "500 dozen of Port Wine, 300 dozen of Essence of Beef and other articles."
These were unnecessary extravagances, he asserted. However I would have thought that both these would have been seen as an aid to convalesence for the wounded men.

When she dismissed a number of orderlies for being drunk and slatternly Sir John Hall replaced them with his own on the strict orders that they would take no instructions from Florence.

So why are some people intend in seeing these two women as a competition as who did the most, when Florence and Mary were so alike, both strong willed, both with a burning desire to alliviate suffering, neither afraid to step outside the Victorian model of how women should behave, and both suffered a degree of prejudice from a male dominated society.

http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/flo2.htm

http://www.maryseacole.com/maryseacole/pages/aboutmary.html