Homeschool History – Florence Nightingale

Hello, and welcome to Homeschool History. I'm Greg Jenner, and I've spent my whole career making history fun on the TV show Horrible Histories and more recently on the BBC podcast You're Dead to Me, though that's mostly for the grown-ups. With everyone being cooped up in the house, I thought I'd deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family. Who says that homeschooling can't be a bit of fun?

Today we are journeying back to the 19th century to meet the nursing reformer who transformed healthcare forever, Florence Nightingale. Florence was born exactly 200 years ago on May 12th, 1820, while her posh parents were travelling around Europe. She was named after the Italian city of Florence, where she was born, while her sister was called Parthenope, after the ancient Greek name for Naples. Back then, these were really unusual baby names; it was like calling your children Sheffield and Slough.

Florence's parents might have been well-to-do, but they were forward-thinking and made sure that she got a good education, which for the early 19th century was actually pretty rare for a girl. Unlike her sister, Florence had a very scientific mind. She loved collecting coins and seashells, doing little experiments, and she was also a brilliant scholar when it came to languages. But she also had a caring side and liked tending to poorly animals. She later adopted 60 cats during her lifetime, and when she was young, she also nursed an injured little owl back to health, calling it Athena and keeping it in her pocket as a pet. She even trained it to peck Parthenope when her playfully silly sister annoyed her.

Right from the start, Florence was fiercely clever, kind-hearted, and mega-determined. When she was about 16, she felt God was calling her to make a difference in the world. Aged 25, she decided to devote her life to helping people. She was going to become a nurse.

Even though we know nursing is an important and skilled job, in Florence's time, society looked down on nurses. They were seen as being common and dirty, and even drunkards. Her parents were horrified. They believed a respectable lady should get married and have kids, but she wanted to break these rules. Florence received several marriage proposals from fancy fellas, but she worried that being a wife and a mother would get in the way of her being a nurse, so she turned them all down. To Florence's parents, rejecting proposals from fancy gentlemen and giving up her nice lifestyle to become a nurse seemed very rebellious.

Despite all this, by 1851, when she was in her early 30s, Florence did manage to do some nursing in Germany. However, she quickly moved on to become more of a nursing manager. She became superintendent at the plush Harley Street in London in 1853.

Nice! This is when everything really kicked off, and I don't mean just for her. A long way away, in a place called the Crimea, Britain had just ganged up with France and Ottoman Turkey to fight against their mutual enemy, the Russians. Thanks to the invention of the whiztastic telegraph machine, it was the first time war reporters could send their stories back home very quickly, and the news they were sending wasn't good. The Crimean War was a total disaster. The army didn't have enough supplies, the troops were freezing cold, and worst of all, the military hospitals were so filthy and unhygienic, they were deadlier than the battlefield.

Florence read about the crisis in the newspapers, and she wanted to help. She was good mates with the war secretary, Sidney Herbert, and he helped her recruit 38 nurses. It took Florence and her recruits nearly two weeks to sail to the Skitari Barracks Hospital in Turkey, where she was greeted with a terrible sight. These days, hospitals are really clean, but this hospital was covered in blood and poo and wee; it was riddled with rats and lice, and the poorly patients were lying in their own filth. The sewers were blocked, and there were even reports of a dead horse rotting in the well from where they got their drinking water. Patients were wearing the same dirty clothes for weeks on end, and nobody so much as cracked open a window to let the stink out. Poo-wee! Florence soon gave the place a really good clean. Think Mary Poppins tidying up the kids' room, but much yuckier.

Florence knew the key to fixing the hospital was the three Ds: dirt, drains, and diet. She set about trying to get hold of soap, towels, bed sheets, clean clothes, and cutlery. She also welcomed the celebrity chef, Alexei Sawyer, who was a French Jamie Oliver basically, and he came in and improved the food in the kitchens. She was also helped by a public fundraiser organized back home by a newspaper, and one of the celebrities who donated to the fundraiser was Charles Dickens. Even though Florence was working very hard, 4,000 patients still died in the winter of 1854. It wasn't her fault; the blocked sewers were the problem, and scientists hadn't yet discovered germs, so she didn't know how to stop the diseases. Even still, you'd think everyone would have welcomed her efforts at least, but many military officers were grumpy that some woman was turning up and giving orders when that was their job. Some of them called her nasty nicknames like "the Bird" and "the Petticoat Imperieurs", meaning a female bossy pants, but Florence wasn't about to let some name-calling stop her.

Not only did she take cleanliness very seriously, she also knew that patients benefited from feeling cared for as people. She introduced animals to the hospital, such as a tortoise called Jimmy, later explaining in her book, "...a small pet is often an excellent companion for the sick." Most famously, however, at nighttime, Florence walked for miles around all the hospital beds, checking on her patients with a lamp to guide her in the dark. The lamp became a symbol of Florence's compassionate style of nursing. Can you imagine being a scared, poorly soldier, then hearing her footsteps and seeing the glow of a lamp and knowing that you weren't alone? One soldier wrote that Florence was like a guardian angel. Mind you, if she was an angel, she was a very strict one. She sent home any nurse who she didn't think was up to the job, which, unfortunately, was about half of the nurses, and she also fired Turkish hospital staff who wanted better wages. But she was still a hero to the soldiers, the most perfect Christian woman, and they started sending home letters to their loved ones about the lady with the lamp. And this then inspired a famous image in the illustrated London News in 1855. The legend of the lady with the lamp caught on. Florence Nightingale was now very famous. Great news, right? – Wrong.

Florence really hated being famous. In fact, she would have hated having this episode be all about her. (Go away!) Sorry, Florey. When she traveled back home after the war, she was so worried about her fans coming up and bothering her, she used a fake name, Miss Smith, to avoid what she called the fuzz buzz or the unwanted attention. Unfortunately for Florence, her sister Parthenope loved being the sister of a celebrity and was always telling stories about her. Maybe it was her way of getting her own back after all that owl pecking.

There were some upsides to fame, however. Florence became good mates with Queen Victoria, who even persuaded Florence to pose for photographs when she really didn't want to. It wasn't all selfies with the Queen, though. Florence's return from the war was something called Crimean fever, and unfortunately, she never got better. She would spend most of her life confined to her bed, being very ill.

So, in the story of Florence Nightingale, can we say: "That's all folks?" Nope, she was just getting started. She may have spent decades in her gym jams – highly relatable right now – but her disability didn't stop her. In fact, it was from her bed that she made her most important contributions to nursing. Remember how she was a brilliant boffin? Well, she now used her math skills to study loads of statistics she'd carefully gathered during the Crimean War.

In fact, she wrote a massive 853-page report about what went wrong, including how many deaths could have been prevented. She was also a dab hand at designing fancy charts and infographics that, when people saw them, explained all of her findings in very easy-to-understand ways. And this was so impressive, Florence was the first-ever woman to be allowed to join the Royal Statistical Society, although, awkwardly, the paperwork hadn't caught up with her and the membership forms kept referring to her as a he or Mr. Nightingale.

She also wrote two brilliantly researched books. "Notes on Nursing" said how important that clean air, clean water, lots of light, room to move, and good food were for the patients, as well, of course, as peace and quiet so people could rest and recover. Her other book was called "Notes on Hospitals," and it suggested changing the layout of hospital rooms and building nice gardens for people to walk around.

Flo also knew nurses needed proper training, so she opened the Nightingale School of Nursing in 1860. It was funded by a national appeal which raised over £44,000, which today is about £2.5 million. Amazingly, it stayed open for 100 years before becoming part of King's College London, where it still exists today. People from all over the world came to be trained at the Nightingale School of Nursing and then took their new skills back home where they sometimes then opened their own training schools.

Florence also worked to improve the really nasty workhouse infirmaries which poor people went to if they were ill. Florence strongly believed that good healthcare was essential for everyone and that hospital care for poor people should match the quality of posh hospitals.

Florence was a force to be reckoned with and could be pretty scary if you didn't do what she asked, but she could also be warm and funny. She wrote more than 14,000 letters during her life and responded to anyone who wrote to her. Even though she was poorly for more than 50 years, she lived until 90 years old, long enough to record her voice on Thomas Edison's newly invented sound recording device. And here it is!

(I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life.)

And in case you didn't quite catch that, Florence said, "I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life."

In true Florence form, she definitely wanted no fuzz buzz when she died in 1910 and refused the offer of a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, where kings and queens are buried. Instead, she now rests in St Margaret's Church in Hampshire. Her grave marker simply reads "FN," with her date of birth and death. It's the simplest of tombstones. Classic Florence.

Even though Florence Nightingale is remembered as the world's most famous nurse, her legacy is more about all the huge pioneering changes she made to nursing and healthcare as a whole, helping to turn it into the vital, noble, and scientific profession we all admire and rely upon today.

What an amazing life! Now it's time for the Florence Nightingale quiz. Ok, 3, 2, 1, here we go!

Question 1: Why did her parents name her Florence?

Question 2: What was Florence's sister called? Don't worry, you won't lose any marks for spelling. It's a tricky one.

Question 3: Florence Nightingale is famous for being a nurse during which war?

Question 4: In 1860, what did Florence Nightingale open so people all over the world could learn about nursing?

And question 5: How old would Florence have been on May 12, 2020?

Ok, now it's time for the answers.

The answer to question 1: She was born in Florence, so she was called Florence.

The answer to question 2: Parthenope.

The answer to question 3: The Crimean War.

The answer to question 4: The Nightingale School of Nursing.

And the answer to question 5: She would have been 200 years old this May.

How did you do? If you didn't get all 5, that's ok, why not listen again on the podcast and try the quiz a second time?

And don't forget to raise a glass for Florence's 200th birthday, which was on May 12th and also marks International Nurses Day. Happy birthday, old Flo!

And of course, to all the nurses, healthcare workers, and carers listening today, thank you, you're amazing.

Tune in next time for some more homeschool history, and make sure to subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. Thank you for listening, take care, and goodbye.

Homeschool History was a Muddy Knees media production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. The script was by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Emma Nagouse and me. The producers were Ben Green and Abbey Patterson, and the historical advisor was Melissa Chatton from the Florence Nightingale Museum.

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