Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

Florence Nightingale: The Spark That Lit the Slow-burning Flame of Progress

Women have always followed the war drum. Throughout history, observers have

described the masses of wives and lovers that followed their husbands and companions

into battle. Even as late as the Napoleonic Wars of 1808-1815, the Wellington-led

British forces consistently trampled into battle with a band of exhausted-looking ladies

hot in pursuit. Deeply in love and worried about having to survive by themselves, these

military wives drew lots that decided whether they were “Not-to-go” or “To-go.” Of

those who were unfortunate enough to draw the “Not-to-go” lot, many sobbed openly and

threw themselves at their husbands during the war departure ceremony.1 Merely

reinforcing the Romantic and Victorian era images of women as being more helpless than

helpful, these ladies of the Napoleonic War had no idea that by the end of the 19th

century, their breed would become extinct. Between the end of the Napoleonic battles in

1815 and the start of the Crimean War in 1854, Great Britain enjoyed peace and

downsized their military.2 Eventually dragged into protecting Turkey (part of the former

Ottoman Empire) from the Napoleonic-like expansion of Russia, Great Britain jumped

into the brawl quite unprepared. Standing on the palace balcony just as the sun began to

rise over the majestic towers of nearby Westminster Abbey, Queen Victoria proudly

waved to the immensely patriotic crowd that had gathered to watch the parade of troops

marching off to the East.3 Victoria had always been proud to call herself a soldier’s

daughter, and it was “in the triple role of wife, mother, and sovereign that Victoria
1
Brigadier F.C.G. Page, Following the Drum: Women in Wellington’s Wars (London: André Deutsch
Limited, 1986), p. 22-23.
2
Helen Rappaport, No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War (London: Aurum
Press Ltd., 2007), p. 4.
3
Ibid., p. 7.

1
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

greeted [the men], bowing and waving from her balcony.”4 Although no one realized it at

the time, the flick of Queen Victoria’s waving wrist did far more than celebrate

England’s military majesty.

Unknowingly ushering in a new age of legitimate female war involvement,

Victoria might as well have been guiding women like Florence Nightingale to the Eastern

front alongside the troops: within the year, reports returned from the frontlines about

Britain’s “Crimean disaster” and the dearth of male orderlies helping the wounded

masses.5 The resultant outcries led to the quick arrival of female nurses in Crimea.

Published in newspapers like The Times, these troublesome tales quickly galvanized

female nurses who decided to act. With proactive women like Nightingale clamoring to

organize supplies and help combat cholera epidemics among the soldiers, the collective

British consciousness experienced a shock. No longer were the women at the front

simply serving as helpless companions, cooks, laundrywomen, and seamstresses for the

troops as they had in all previous wars; instead, this new brand of (ironically) Victoria-

inspired military women implemented bureaucratic and organizational changes and

became renowned for their skills as nurses. Despite the fact that the British forces

desperately needed Nightingale and the other female nurses, Victorian sensibilities of

separate social spheres and the collective historical memory of women serving as

laundresses and seamstresses during previous wars prevented a rapid social acceptance of

these new female nurses. In fact, it was only after 1898’s Anglo-Boer War that

4
Ibid., p. 7-8.
5
Sue M. Goldie, “I Have Done My Duty”: Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War 1854-56 (Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1987), p. 3.

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 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

professional female nurses were widely accepted and began to enroll in the hundreds,

eventually culminating in thousands participating in the First World War.6

Part of the reason women like Florence Nightingale “engaged in a Laocoönian

struggle with [male] officials to try and reduce the vast chaos of the hospitals to some sort

of order and regularity” was the poor reputation past female war followers had earned

among the Victorian-minded men.7 In previous wars, the main occupation for wives

included “cooking, and mending and laundering their husbands’ clothes, perhaps earning

extra pennies by washing for batchelor soldiers also. Most wives were content to follow

the drum.”8 In historical accounts of these battles, the sources consistently praise the

female accompaniment for providing some semblance of divine domesticity for the

rugged soldiers. Accounts of such interactions read like a modern-day morning routine.

The morning brought further troubles to add to Mary [Anton]’s misery.

James went off to carry out his duties, leaving her to do the housekeeping.
She spent rather more than they could afford on some bread and wine to
replace the lost rations and then set off with her purchases to join James,
who was on an advanced picque. She had only gone a little way along a
steep and narrow path when her foot slipped and she fell down the slope.
Fortunately she was not badly hurt and escaped with a nasty shaking and a
bad fright. More seriously, in the fall she had lost her precious parcel.
With great determination she returned to the camp, dipped once more into
their dwindling stock of money, bought another loaf and more wine, and
set off on a second attempt to reach her husband, who had gone on duty
without food … she had used up her final resources and sank to the
ground, weeping bitterly.9

In addition to spending most of her time sewing, Mary Anton failed to prove that she

could effectively provide food for her husband or manage their finances. In direct

contrast to later female followers of war like Nightingale who successfully balanced long

6
Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses 1854-1914 (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1988), p. 1-2.
7
Goldie, p. 4.
8
Page, p. vii.
9
Page, p. 39.

3
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

ledgers for unit-wide military supplies, these earlier women who followed the battle drum

earned reputations as relatively helpless women whose primary benefit was reminding

their husbands of home. Contributing to the nuisance reputation that these women had

earned among the military commanders were instances in which women fell behind the

ranks after stopping to shop in nearby villages or when women occasionally bought bread

that had been earmarked for the troops (the latter of which embarrassed the commissariat

staff who had to explain the situation to hungry troops).10 Chauvinistic military officials

had dealt with meddling females since the eighteenth century when the “raggle-taggle of

camp followers …had [become] an integral part of the workings of a regiment.”11 While

most military men did appreciate the traditional cooking, laundry, cleaning, and sewing

roles wartime women filled, the men did not view those women as universally helpful,

particularly during battles when the female camp simply made it more difficult to

retreat.12 In fact, warring armies periodically captured women and children in order to

use them as war pawns. Sergeant Costello of the 95th Rifles recalled how the French

raided the enemy camp and stole several children and donkeys. “In a few days, however,

the French, desiring to be as little encumbered as ourselves with children, sent them back

with a flag of truce.”13 During the Napoleonic Wars, “many of the women found it

difficult to keep up with the column” and that resulted in a nearly universal opinion

among the soldiers that the costs of having women accompany columns far outweighed

the down-time benefits.14 After observing how fluidly the French forces were able to

retreat and move, British soldiers often remarked how “the French had been far more

10
Page, p. 27.
11
Rappaport, p. 28.
12
Ibid., p. 27.
13
Page, p. 32.
14
Ibid., p. 27.

4
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

judicious in leaving their women at home.”15 Both Wellington and Napoleon agreed that

women who followed men to war were equally as bad as men, if not worse, when it came

to plundering. Historians even quote Napoleon as saying, “Women when they are bad,

are worse than men, and more ready to commit crimes. The soft sex, when degraded,

falls lower than the other. Women are always much better, or much worse than men.”16

More than simply alluding to the logistical problems posed by women who got

ahead of the columns, blocked the road, or lagged behind, Napoleon’s statement also

reflects the pervasive Victorian thought that God had endowed women alone with

qualities like gentleness and sympathy, and it was the ‘woman’s mission’ to utilize those

calm gifts in a benevolent manner, far away from a violent, public, and masculine world

like the army.17 Reports of the “hardened’ women accompanying the troops surfaced

after the capture of Badajoz in April 1812. A British soldier recorded a telling event.

An officer with yellow facings came out of the town with a frail one
[woman] leaning on his arm, and carrying in her other hand a cage with a
bird in it; and she tripped over the bodies of the dead and dying with all
the ease and indifference of a person moving in a ball-room—no more
care being evinced by either of them, than if nothing extraordinary had
occurred. It was really lamentable to see such an utter absence of all right
feeling.18

Unfortunately for the productive and ladylike women (like Nightingale) who experienced

difficult prejudice as a result of the lingering impression left by earlier war women, un-

Victorian incidents like the Badajoz affair existed en masse. In November 1813, an

injured Private Wheeler dragged himself away from the battle of Nivelle to dress his

wounds and came across a shocking sight. Wheeler writes,

15
Rappaport, p. 41.
16
Page, p. 31.
17
Summers, p. 3.
Page, p. 32.
18
Page, p. 49.

5
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

Outside the buildings were a great many wounded soldiers, some drinking
and smoking, others rolling about, some half and others mad drunk, while
a great many lay stretched out as if dead. Women too, who had followed
up the rear of the army, had forgot they had come up in the laudable
pursuit of seeking their husbands [and] had freely partaken of the
damnable poison until they had transformed themselves into something
more like fiends than angels of mercy.19

Forty years later, when “angels of mercy” like Nightingale answered the call to duty

during the Crimean War, they served as direct contrasts to the earlier female drum

followers; however, the “disreputable behaviour of some of the army wives at Scutari,

who spent their time drinking and whoring” continued to cause challenges for nurses like

Nightingale.20

Despite the challenges they faced once they reached the East and began to deal

with uncooperative military leadership and atrocious health standards, Nightingale and

company remained vital to the faulty British campaign and implemented many changes

which ultimately legitimized their presence. As previously noted the British forces that

Queen Victoria waved into the eastern sunrise lacked both manpower and trained

preparedness going into the Crimean War.21 The “Conservative inertia” that followed the

exhausting Napoleonic Wars failed miserably when the nation needed to rise to the

occasion in 1854.22 As soon as they landed at Gallipoli and Scutari, the British forces
19
Ibid., p. 55.
20
Rappaport, p. 98.
Summers, p. 14. It remains important to note that pre-Crimean War nurses were not all bad. “Dickens’s
fictional characters, the drunken and dissolute Sarah Gamp and Betsy Prig, have stamped our imagination
indelibly with a stereotype of the pre-Nightingale nurse. But Sarah and Betsy are caricatures, not historical
portraits. They would have caused great offence to such a woman as Elizabeth Davis, who was sixty years
old when engaged for the Crimea; respectable, literate, the daughter of a Welsh dissenting preacher, she
had supported herself by turns as domestic servant, hospital nurse, and private nurse.”
21
McDonald, Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family, p. 27. “British and French
troops invaded the Crimea 14 September 1854 and the Battle of Alma was fought on 20 September.
Wounded men from the Battle of Balaclava, a great but costly victory for the British, were arriving at the
Scutari Barrack Hospital (across the strait from Constantinople) just as the Nightingale group did. The
Crimean War was the first war for British troops other than colonial expeditions in forty years and the
Army was ill-prepared. Large numbers died, although probably not more proportionately than the
Nanpoleonic Wars.”
22
Goldie, p. 8.

6
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

noticed their lack of organization and preparedness compared to the French forces.23

With no Duke of Wellington to lead and inspire the troops, the combination of elder

aristocratic soldiers who viewed the excursion as a sport and the younger, fresh-faced

generation who had no war experience whatsoever proved unfortunate.24

In addition to their basic disorganization, the British army suffered immensely

from the harsh Crimean climate. As the British army shifted into attack mode against

Russia, it “was suffering severely from the unhealthiness of Varna. As the summer

progressed, the heat became unbearable for the unsuitably clothed troops. Diarrhoea and

dysentery became universal; by the end of July, a full-scale cholera epidemic was

raging.”25 Further exacerbating the spread of cholera were the disgusting barracks that

were rife with disease. With as much as 40% of the British army requiring treatment at

any one time, the cold, damp, unventilated, foul-smelling, and crowded barracks created

a veritable breeding ground for infectious disease.26 In mid-July 1854, cholera broke out

in the Gallipoli encampment.27 Additionally, outbreaks of cholera both before and after

battles like Alma, Balaklava, and Scutari necessitated a new type of medical coordination

that did not exist within the diminished British military camp.28 In the midst of all the

persisting illness, letters arrived at newspaper headquarters, and war correspondents like

W.H. Russell of The Times directed tirades toward charitable middle-class individuals

who had enough money saved that they could volunteer with the war effort.29 This

journalistic call to arms received an answer in the form of upper class “ladies” like

23
Ibid., p. 16.
24
Rappaport, p. 30.
25
Goldie, p. 16.
26
Rappaport, p. 21.
27
Ibid., p. 44.
28
Summers, p. 30.
29
Ibid., p. 34.

7
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

Florence Nightingale, who had enough experience in related healthcare and

organizational fields that they could effectively address the debilitating military issues.

In answering the urgent nursing call to arms, Florence Nightingale and her British

contemporaries represented a more acceptable Victorian solution to a militarily mortal

threat. Nightingale’s own background so sharply contrasted the life experiences of those

women who had previously followed the war drum, that the combination of her familial

character and worthwhile deeds further legitimized female nurses in the eyes of a mildly

disapproving society. Papers like The Times had emphasized the nationalistic nature of

the nurse battle cry by even mentioning that the French forces had far better medical care

and barrack conditions.30 Consequently, by answering that call, Nightingale and her

nursing comrades immediately legitimized their intentions in the minds of some military

officials and British patriots. Unlike the wives who had traditionally followed the war

drum for selfish reasons (e.g. feeling more comfortable by their husbands’ side), and then

caused trouble, women like Nightingale shipped off to Crimea as a way of accomplishing

their admirable patriotic duty.31 Despite the low numbers of Nightingale’s initial nurse

party (38 women total: 8 sisters and 6 nurses from Anglican orders; 5 nuns from Catholic

Convents of Mercy; and 14 secular hospital nurses), each woman was of such a respected

social class, whether it be religious or social, that they dealt with none of the accusations

of whoring and drinking which earlier drum followers had.32 Nightingale herself was

born in Florence, Italy, to wealthy English parents; she had also reached a level of

30
Goldie, p. 16.
31
Page, p. 48. Traditionally, “when the army went into action the general rule was for the women to
remain with the baggage so that they would not be involved in the fighting.” Consequently, it remained
quite clear that those women did not accompany their husbands to battle so as to benefit the overall war
effort.
32
Summers, p. 38.

8
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

fluency in French, Italian, German, Greek, and Latin.33 Nightingale and her

contemporaries, who included Mary Stanley and Jane Shaw Stewart, all qualified as high

class, learned women, and as a result, their participation in the war posed a surprising

affront to the male Victorian sensibilities. On the one hand, their status as “ladies” made

their presence in a dank hospital full of males a problem; however, this status also gave

them the advantage of being qualified to supervise ward work while “being immune to

sexual temptation from the lower-class patients.”34 Thus, as the embodiment of a living

compromise between the realm of public service in the army (traditionally a masculine

function) and their inherent upper class status, Nightingale’s nurses became willing

public servants of the male military hierarchy.

By transgressing the traditional upper class Victorian separate spheres,

Nightingale and her contemporaries reflected the larger social movement that was

occurring at the time. Because the Crimean War had been publicly declared a matter of

nationalistic sensibilities, it had also blurred the line between the military and the rest of

society. Unlike the Napoleonic Wars in which the “armed forces were essentially remote

from the mainstream of society,” (while paid through universal taxation, nonetheless

separate), the national wars (including the Crimean) of the mid-century involved all

civilians—even women.35 And “only when war became a more general civilian concern

… could [it] become a more general female concern.”36 Accordingly,

If soldiers were no longer merely social undesirables or cannon fodder,

then the women who organized hospitals for them and tended their
wounds need not be dubious adventuresses or wretched camp followers.

33
Lynn McDonald, Women Theorists on Society and Politics (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
1998), p. 165.
34
Summers, p. 4.
35
Ibid., p. 5.
36
Ibid.

9
 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

They could be worthy citizens and even heroines, claiming their right to
participate in the great national struggles of their day.37

Thus, the female nurse participation in this war made a lasting impression on British

society at large, in a way that no other previous female participation had made an

impression. So although the residue from the relatively unhelpful involvement in the

earlier wars combined with Victorian sensibilities to cast a light of initial impropriety on

Nightingale and her contemporaries, the class of the nurses combined with their overtly

patriotic rationale for assisting with Crimea and resulted in a progressively positive

association, which was only augmented in its power when letters about Nightingale’s

deeds reached England’s shores.

On a more literal level, the nurses so effectively implemented medical and

military supply reforms that they even altered the connotation of the word “nurse” itself.

Upon their arrival in Scutari, Nightingale and her small band of nurses had found “the

Army atrociously under equipped medically and lacking in all kinds of essentials,

including food and bedding.”38 In addition to the horrid conditions surrounding them (it

was reported that Nightingale herself killed a rat while caring for an ill nursing sister),

some of the doctors refused to accept the presence of Nightingale and her nurses.39

Through visible advancements in the organization of the military’s medical supplies [see

attached supply ledger] and the vastly improved care for wounded soldiers, Nightingale

and her fellow nurses achieved gradual accolades and fame. For instance, in a letter

[attached] written Friday, January 19, 1855 by an eyewitness in the Crimean War, the

author praised the noted change he had seen following Nightingale’s arrival in the East.

37
Ibid., p. 6.
38
McDonald, p. 28.
39
Ibid., p. 28-29.

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 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

I have been talking to my colour serjeant the other day who was wounded
at Alma, he gives a much better account of affairs at Scutari, when he first
went he was left for 7 days without seeing a Doctor. He survived it &
says they are now much better off. Miss Nightingale and her attendant
angels he [t]alked most enthusiastically about, they were every where
among the sick, doing more good than any Doctors.40

Since historians argue that these types of writings are often simply “political critiques

masked as letters,” it remains likely that a large group of soldiers supported this

politically dominant issue.41 Other eyewitnesses also discussed Nightingale’s immensely

helpful style of care-giving in their public discussions. Remarks about how Nightingale

herself did the heroic work abounded. “[She] knelt in the dirt and bound up soldiers’

wounds, nursed the ill (there were outbreaks of cholera and typhus) and assisted at

amputations. At night she visited the wards, giving rise to the image of ‘the lady with the

amp.’”42 Another primary source, Sidney Goldolphin Osborne in Scutari, described how

Nightingale’s bravery led her to the most difficult cases. Osborne writes, “The more

awful to every sense a particular case, especially if it was that of a dying man, her slight

form would be seen bending over him, administering to his ease in every way in her

power, and seldom quitting his side till death released him.”43 Although some argued that

Nightingale spent more of the war running operations in Scutari than she did physically

nursing soldiers, there is no doubt her high skill level in both care-giving and organizing

won her respect from some of her most ardent critics.44 In fact, “[many doctors] soon

learned that going to ‘the bird,’ as [Nightingale] was jokingly called, was the way to get

things done. She had supplies that the Army either did not have, or did not know that it

40
Harvard Widener Library Microfilm of the original letter.
41
Mary A. Favret, Romantic Correspondence: Women, politics and the fiction of letters (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 113.
42
McDonald, p. 28.
43
Goldie, p. 8-9.
44
Rappaport, p. 110.

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 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

had because its record keeping was so bad.”45 For a group of women who delivered

visibly improved care and had an indirect publicity machine via the letters sent home by

wounded soldiers, Nightingale and her fellow nurses set the ball of progress rolling.

Arriving on the scene in the mid-1800s, Florence Nightingale and her fellow

nurses faced a period of tension. Somehow managing to embody both the traditional and

the innovative, Nightingale herself cooked and washed (both traditional tasks) while still

organizing Scurati (new bureaucratic job) behind the scenes.46 Although the taint of

ignominious drum followers and Victorian sensibilities made it more difficult for

Nightingale to work with some of the military officers, her upper class upbringing and

well publicized good works eased the situation. Throughout Nightingale’s life, she had a

constant give and take; there were consistently those who supported her and those who

refused to do so. Similarly, although the war had both made the military more influential

in society and opened the possibility for more fluid lines between male-female social

spheres, some conservative strongholds continued to fight against a legitimized female

medical presence in battle. Perhaps the long, slow struggle for progress begun by women

like Nightingale is best expressed by the following timeline:

In 1883, British nursing earned the ultimate accolade when the government instituted the

decoration of the Royal Red Cross.47 Just 30 years later, however, at the end of WWI,

female nurses who had been brought into the army hospital system “largely as numerical

substitutes for men … [remained] far from being fully incorporated in society, [and the]

women found themselves rejected as the ‘surplus two million.’”48

45
McDonald, p. 29.
46
Goldie, p. 9.
47
Summers, p. 6.
48
Ibid., p. 9.

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 Kathleen Fitzgerald—Final History 10b Paper

Bibliography

Favret, Mary A. Romantic Correspondence: Women, politics and the fiction of letters

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Goldie, Sue M. “I have done my duty”: Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War 1854-

56 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987)

Harvard Library Original Microfilm Letters, 2007

McDonald, Lynn. Women Theorists on Society and Politics (Waterloo:Wilfrid Laurier

University Press, 1998)

Page, Brigadier F.C.G. Following The Drum: Women in Wellington’s Wars (London:

André Deutsch Limited, 1986)

Rappaport, Helen. No Place For Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean

War (London: Aurum Press, Ltd., 2007)

Summers, Anne. Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses 1854-1914

(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1988)

13