A NEW exhibition examining changing perceptions of Florence Nightingale opens tomorrow 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 change into a nurse at Lea Hurst. In her twenties, Nightingale brought medicine, food, and bedding to poor villagers. She wrote in 1846: “O glad six weeks on the Hurst, where I discovered my business on 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’s to live!”
Nightingale’s background was interdenominational. She had three Unitarian grandparents, but her father, William, was patron of the living on the church near the family’s Hampshire home, and she or he was baptised within the Anglican church in Florence. Nightingale’s nursing training took place on 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’ attempting 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 guts was a belief in a calling to do something vital, in a cause that mattered. She believed everybody had that in them, to make a difference and to take heed to that higher calling.
“The areas we deal with 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 profession? We’re putting modern words on to those areas, like ‘rebel’ and ‘feminist’.”
Ms Edwards continued: “She’s not a lot considered an angel today: 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 should you were a soldier in your deathbed, but that was a tiny a part of her: [an] intelligent, hard-working woman, achieving an excellent deal in a person’s world. But we do bring that word in when talking in regards to the Crimean period.”
On one side of the Cromford exhibition space is the parable, the perception, and, on the opposite side, reality: Nightingale in her own words. At the tip, visitors are asked: “What do you concentrate on Florence Nightingale?” The words used trigger a response in the ultimate picture. “If you say she was an angel, it should change shape and color. The picture will show what people think today of Florence Nightingale.”
Ms Edwards concluded: “If I did a fraction of what she did in her life, I’d achieve success. She was a really remarkable woman who you’ll be able to’t help but need to know more about.”
“Florence Nightingale: A Living Portrait” shall be at Cromford Mills, Mill Lane, Derbyshire, until 3 November. Phone 01629 823256.
