“What is my business in this world, and what have I done this fortnight?” She wrote, in her twenties, lost and unsuccessful.
In 1840s Britain, her father was a respectable, married, and well-established man who deeply valued family. Being very wealthy, he saw no place that united intellectual equipment, standard elegance, and breeding for a woman. He decided to privately educate her and her sister in history, philosophy, languages, and art.
So every morning, her dad liked Florence and her sister to sit with him in the library after breakfast while he read The Times aloud, anything that struck him as good.
For her sister Parthenope, the morning’s reading did not matter; she went on with her drawing and thought of a suitable man to marry and mirror her mother's wishes.
But for Florence Nightingale, by then twenty-two years old, this was boring her to death.
You see, society's design ensured that a woman without a man was no one, that her entire function was to support a man, and that sewing, serving, and beauty were more relevant than science or intellectual curiosity.
She adored her father but knew she wasn’t meant for the typical life.
She dreaded her mother and the wealthy men behind her looking to propose.
The abundant world of aristocracy, balls, and palaces passed from her mind, and so did the formal and shallow chats, the summer getaways, and the easy and comfortable life.
She had a call, but she didn’t know what it was.
She was never fitting in.
But she challenged.
She confided her struggles with her Aunt Mai, asking for help. She liked getting smart. She found certainty in mathematics, so they both woke up early every morning before sunrise, lit a fire, and sat to study mathematics and statistics. She didn’t know her purpose, but it was clear that the first necessity was to improve herself “to become worthy.”
“What use was mathematics to a married woman?” her mother used to reply to Florence’s wishes. But Florence didn’t mind anymore; she was determined.
Often, we mistake the expectations of those around us for guidance about our own goals. When we don’t know our priorities, it is very easy for others to place their agendas on us.
And so she noticed that what mattered to her was happening close to home.
England was in the grip of what has passed into history as “the hungry forties.” It had been more than twenty years since Queen Victoria came into power, and at least seventy thousand people woke up every day in London without the slightest knowledge of where they would lay their heads at night.
Trafalgar Square, once remembering the victories of the Brits against Napoleon, was known for having hundreds of people sleeping in every night. Families drifted day and night between east and central London, looking for jobs across the Thames ports to survive. People who found accommodation shared a space the average size of a modern double-size bedroom without privacy and lacking the most basic needs.
Commonly engaging in prostitution or exploited labour, parents were willing to devote themselves to any reality to help feed their starving kids, and children started to work formally at the age of nine or younger if the documentation could be skipped. On top of that, health conditions were so bad that the annual child mortality rate in England was 255 deaths per 1,000 live births (Today, the rate is 1.98).
“What can an individual do towards lifting the load of suffering from the helpless and miserable?” Florence asked. Stasis made her ill, not on good terms, and unhappy with her family. She felt her vocation lay in hospitals among the sick but feared breaking the status quo.
Until one day, she met Dr Ward Howe, the American philanthropist, in one of the guest visits to her family’s wealthy estate. Far from her parents, she asked him, “Dr. Howe, do you think it would be unsuitable and unbecoming for a young English woman to devote herself to works of charity in hospitals and elsewhere? Do you think it would be a dreadful thing?”
“My dear Florence, in England, what is unusual is thought to be unsuitable,” Wand responded, “but I say you ‘go forward’ if you have a vocation for that way of life, act up to your inspiration, and you will find there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others. Choose, go on with it, wherever it may lead, and God be with you.”
Go forward.
Act upon your inspiration.
It was the final push she needed.
With England calling, she became even more curious. “Dreaming” enslaved her more and more.
And she waited patiently.
Years were passing by.
Despite not having complete freedom, she started to gain knowledge to have a worthy state and be released from her family. In secret, awaiting her opportunity, she got up before dawn and began researching and studying hospital reports and books dealing with public health. She wrote by candlelight, wrapped in a shawl. Notebook after notebook was filled with facts, compared, indexed, and tabulated. She had the habit of writing on anything that came to her hand - on odd pieces of blotting paper, on the backs of calendars, and the margins of letters. She started to send letters requesting reports from her acquaintances in Paris, Berlin, and other cities close to Britain.
She collected information for over five years—facts, rates, and locations. Over time, she became the first expert in sanitary conditions in Europe, and both her family and family-influencing acquaintances noticed this.
And every time the breakfast bell rang, she came down to be the Daughter at Home. But it was different this time. She started to use her day-to-day life to learn the best ways to discover things that could be useful for her awaiting future. Quality time. She acted with interest in the still room, the pantry, and the linen room, learning everything related to hospitality.
She knew fitting in would make her disappear, so she did the opposite.
She changed. She boldly expressed her knowledge and interest to anyone she knew. In time, voices connected her to the most influential politicians of the day. Her mother was upset.
They say that when you want something, you have to express it out loud to everyone you come across, to anyone you know, because that’s the most extraordinary way for the universe to help you.
She asked to go to Europe, which her dad granted. Her mom became ill, thinking that she was ruining her life. She spent time in Paris and Berlin, learning more about hospitals and practices.
When she was thirty-one, she was still caged but ready. “Do you know what I always think when I look at that row of windows?” Florence told a house guest back in England, admiring the Nightingale family’s splendid mansion, “I think how I should turn it into a hospital and just where I should place the beds.”
Finally, after continuous resistance from her family to let her accomplish her calling, in June 1851, she wrote a private note about her family in a new vein: “I must expect no sympathy or help from them. I must take; they will not be given to me.” She made her breakthrough by signing up to a hospital academy in Berlin.
Now, her family was disappointed, but in pain, she decided to push forward. Being ready, she started striving for success through a series of acts, connections, and meritocracy.
She was assigned as a superintendent of an institution in London in 1853, where she responded in readiness during times of outbursts of cholera in the city.
She sorted and reorganised the hospital and started to ask for information about other hospitals.
She proposed a scheme to train nurses and was assigned as Superintendent of Nurses.
She was appointed Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey during the Crimean War In 1854.
She became known as the Lady of the Lamp in Crimea for her grit and determination. She never let any man who came under her observation die alone. If he were conscious, she herself stayed beside him; she estimated that during winter in Crimea, she witnessed 2,000 deathbeds.
She reformed the British Soldiers during the war, together with the entire institution, training nurses, setting hygienic rules, and reducing the mortality rate by asking the right questions and tolerating others' opinions.She changed the image of the British Soldiers from reportedly being the disgraceful and drunk black sheep of their families to a figure of respect, honour, tribe and knowledge.
She was needed. She acted on the occasion. She delivered over two sacrificing years.
When she returned from Crimea in 1856, she didn’t stop. The job was not done. Parades were being prepared for her, but she ignored them. She came through the backdoor straight to work. Her influence was extraordinary, and so were her ideas.
Now, the world knew her. People praised her on the streets. Her feasts in Crimea were known as an inspiration to every nurse in major European cities. Westminster and Queen Victoria wanted to meet her, and they did. Spending multiple occasions with Prince Albert, discussing the war, health care, poverty, religion, and every affair.
Now, her mother expressed pride about her chosen vocation; she wasn’t ill anymore. Suddenly, Florence was doing what their family wanted her to do.
She was urged by what she saw and experienced. She continued to publish multiple papers on reforming hospitals, nurse training, and mechanisms to reduce the expenses of the army medical services (which were still used until the Second World War). She helped the Americans during the Civil War. She provided core recommendations for the sanitary code in multiple European kingdoms, India and helped a British delegation in Egypt.
She helped provide a code system to manage the workhouses for the poor in London. And poverty in London was changing. She made her part.
She didn’t think any more about her last name and her family. She didn’t think about love. She didn’t spare a second to think about what they would say, whom, when, and where. She hid from fame and ego. She thought about her. She stood on herself, and that made everyone else stand with her.
“Though I am known as the founder of the Red Cross and the originator of the Convention of Geneva” said Jean Henry Dunant one opportunity in 1872, “it is to an Englishwoman that all the honour of that Convention is due. What inspired me was the work of Miss Florence Nightingale.”
She became an inspiration.
Before Florence Nightingale, it was something new to call a girl like Florence. A decade after her breakthrough, thousands of girls worldwide would be named Florence in honour of her.
Her work still resonates in legacy and honour for the nurses in every hospital system in Great Britain and the world.
Her story reminds us of the importance of patience toward our goals. Sometimes, the most meaningful part of our lives can be blocked by our circumstances: setbacks from our family's opinions or forces, a tradition, a relationship ending, a comment from a friend, our work circumstances…
But that’s when we catch ourselves getting ready and preparing, looking for a clear view towards the future, keeping the main thing, the main thing. “Two words should be taken to heart and obeyed when exerting ourselves for good and restraining ourselves from evil,” says Epictetus, “Words that will ensure a blameless and untroubled life: persist and resist.”
Persist and resist; when expressing ourselves is not possible.
Persist and resist; when the world blinds our clearest objectives.
Persist and resist; when endurance is the only thing needed.
Persist and resist; when your act is not ready. Yet.
Sources
[1] Florence Nightingale - Cecil Woodham-Smith
[2] The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper - Hallie Rubenhold