Those who learned their history from the Ladybird books (and subsequently had to learn something different) may remember the cover of the volume on Florence Nightingale. She stands calm, authoritative, sympathetic, a national heroine, holding a lantern: the epitome of compassion. “The lady of the lamp” of popular memory is history as myth; it was not a contemporary ascription, but came after her death. The reality is more nuanced and less romanticised, as Fr Terry Tastard (priest and academic) sets out in this excellent, elegantly written, dispassionate and judiciously argued account. He charts a course through confessional divisions and clashes of personality with aplomb.
Nightingale took 38 women with her to the Crimea to care for the wounded in the conflict against Russia. Of the nurses, 18 were nuns; ten of whom were Catholics and eight Anglicans. Ages ranged from 27 to 32. They faced personal, institutional and military hostility. For many, they represented an unwelcome innovation and intrusion; consequently they were ignored or disregarded, insulted and bullied. Some buckled, returning home; others succumbed to sickness; two died. That most survived was a testament to their tenacity and Nightingale’s ferocity.
Nightingale had some advantages, such as a friend of the Secretary State for War, Sidney Herbert, to whom she had direct access and could appeal. Even he did not escape her censure, however. When he demurred from a request, siding with the military, she told him that she would not allow his authority to intimidate her. He relented in the face of her iron will.
She could capitalise on the failure of army doctors and medical assistants. The most egregious, the prescribed treatment for ever-prevalent dysentery, was medically induced starvation. If the dysentery did not kill the patient, lack of food and water did. Changes came as the sheer number of casualties from the bloody conflict overcame residual institutional reluctance to accede to Nightingale’s requirements and the ministration of her nurses.
Nightingale could be diplomatic if that better served her purpose. She could skilfully navigate the choppy waters of stony military and political indifference. Her commitment brought her to the point of exhaustion and beyond.
It was an ecumenical endeavour. Emma Langston and Bertha Turnbull were both Anglicans. Langston, one of the founders of the Park Village Sisterhood, suffered from self-doubt and insecurity. Turnbull, more robust, had a “heroic mind”, a sense of humour and a loving heart.
The Anglican nuns were fewer and made a more modest contribution than their Catholic counterparts. Anglican sisterhoods were newly formed, in the wake of the Oxford Movement. They had no tradition on which to draw, no episcopal support, and were viewed with suspicion within their own communion.
Discord was not absent; tensions were inevitable. A cry of “Jesuit conspiracy” raised its ugly head. Nightingale, solidly Anglican, wished to dismiss a Unitarian nurse for doctrinal and not medical reasons. A rather weary War Office ruled that it could not “allow the Hospitals to become schools of controversial theology and the scene of religious dissensions and animosity”. Some hope.
The Catholic nuns were led by Mary Clare Moore and Mary Francis Bridgeman. Moore had a sense of humour and innate authority: it took a look or raised finger to issue a rebuke. Whereas Nightingale and Moore formed a close, cordial relationship, it was the opposite with Bridgeman. There was mutual antipathy and loathing from the outset. Both had overbearing personalities and commitment to the righteousness of their cause and actions.
Unlike with Moore, Nightingale was unable to bridge the confessional division between her and Bridgeman. Neither emerges from their conflict untarnished. Their relationship was marked by intransigence, suspicion, incomprehension and bitterness that lasted long after the war ended. Nightingale had to be in control, seen and acknowledged to be in command not only by the military hierarchy and Westminster politicians but by nurses and nuns alike.
Bridgeman, implacably rebarbative, had a penchant for spitting vituperation, strikingly fierce – even for a nun. For her, Nightingale represented British imperial power, while she herself was ferociously proud of her Irishness. A relative of Daniel O’Connell, she had witnessed the famine of 1846-1849 and bitterly resented the English occupation of Ireland. This clash of personalities, cultures and nationalities is admirably set out in all its astonishing, gory splendour.
This book presents a more nuanced and less reverential appraisal of Nightingale than the saintly image of an earlier age, despite the denunciations of Bridgeman, but it has not dislodged her from the popular pantheon of a Ladybird heroine: at least not yet.
The Revd William Davage is a former priest librarian of Pusey House, Oxford.
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