A NEW exhibition examining changing perceptions of Florence Nightingale opens on Saturday at Cromford Mills, Derwent Valley, in Derbyshire.
Nightingale spent most of her childhood near by at Lea Hurst, the family summer home. Her great-uncle, Peter Nightingale, invested in Richard Arkwright’s revolutionary Cromford Mills.
Nightingale first sensed a calling to become a nurse at Lea Hurst. In her twenties, Nightingale brought medicine, food, and bedding to poor villagers. She wrote in 1846: “O happy six weeks at the Hurst, where I found my business in this world. My heart was filled. My soul was at home. I wanted no other heaven. May God be thanked, as He never yet has been thanked, for that glimpse of what it is to live!”
Nightingale’s background was interdenominational. She had three Unitarian grandparents, but her father, William, was patron of the living at the church near the family’s Hampshire home, and she was baptised in the Anglican church in Florence. Nightingale’s nursing training took place at the Lutheran Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein, near Düsseldorf, in 1850 and 1851. Yet her Crimean War (1853-56) nursing was also influenced by French Roman Catholic nursing orders.
The general manager of the Florence Nightingale Museum, Katie Edwards, explained that the French nursing sisters compared favourably with the Dickensian stereotype of nurses as drunk, disorderly, and dirty. “She thought it was more organised, it had more structure, more professionalism; Florence was very keen on the professionalism of nursing.” Nightingale implemented the practices that worked well in her training school for nursing and Scutari hospital.
Letters show that Nightingale objected to nuns’ trying to convert soldiers on their deathbeds.
“Florence Nightingale: A Living Portrait” is an interactive, hands-on, image-led exhibition. “We don’t focus too heavily on the religious aspect: mostly the calling from God,” Ms Edwards said, “the spiritual being that she was, that influenced all her work. She was open to all different religions, she had progressive views. At the heart was a belief in a calling to do something important, in a cause that mattered. She believed everybody had that in them, to make a difference and to listen to that higher calling.
“The areas we focus on are hero, feminist, angel, lady with the lamp, the angel of the Crimean War. Was she a rebel because she refused to marry because she wanted a career? We’re putting modern words on to those areas, like ‘rebel’ and ‘feminist’.”
Ms Edwards continued: “She’s not so much regarded as an angel these days: more of a feminist, a statistician. For a younger generation, ‘angel’ can have meanings taking away from the work. You might see her as an angel if you were a soldier on your deathbed, but that was a tiny part of her: [an] intelligent, hard-working woman, achieving a great deal in a man’s world. But we do bring that word in when talking about the Crimean period.”
On one side of the Cromford exhibition space is the myth, the perception, and, on the other side, reality: Nightingale in her own words. At the end, visitors are asked: “What do you think about Florence Nightingale?” The words used trigger a reaction in the final picture. “If you say she was an angel, it will change shape and colour. The picture will show what people think these days of Florence Nightingale.”
Ms Edwards concluded: “If I did a fraction of what she did in her life, I’d be successful. She was a very remarkable woman who you can’t help but want to know more about.”
“Florence Nightingale: A Living Portrait” will be at Cromford Mills, Mill Lane, Derbyshire, until 3 November. Phone 01629 823256.
cromfordmills.org.uk