She was the 19th-century pioneer of modern nursing, dubbed the “lady with the lamp” for her continuous care of wounded soldiers in the Crimean war. In an earlier age of contagion, she was far ahead of her time in realising that cleanliness, fresh air and open-air exercise helped patients recover from injury and disease.
Now a previously unpublished letter that Florence Nightingale received as a teenager from her father reveals that he was a major inspiration in shaping her radical approach to a healthy mind and body.
In 1835, William Nightingale wrote to his daughter setting out a strict regime for keeping fit: “Exercise for 10 minutes every day before breakfast. Before you dress do the exercise of the arms 20 times. In the course of the day 20 minutes’ exercise must be done and if not well done 10 minutes more. Run down to the gate before breakfast by the road … Every day you must be an hour out of doors before dinner unless you have permission to do otherwise.”
The same letter reveals that he was just as disciplined about other aspects of his daughter’s conduct and wellbeing: “Never sit down to tea without changing, if not changed it must be taken upstairs … Some new poetry to be learned & two things prepared for this evening. I always prefer varied poetry. Practise sacred music for half an hour … If any of these things are omitted you will work them up the next day.”
The letter will feature in a forthcoming book, Florence Nightingale at Home, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in November. The letter is among unpublished archival material on which the book’s four authors have drawn, and which offers new insights into her pioneering work.
Nightingale had a privileged childhood at a time of widespread child labour and high infant mortality, and when most people lived in cramped, insanitary dwellings and hospitals were filthy and badly run, with many patients having little hope of coming out alive. Her own parents were horrified to learn that she wanted to become a nurse in an age when nurses were thought of as drunk and promiscuous.
William Nightingale’s 1835 letter was among unpublished material unearthed from piles of dusty boxes at Claydon House, the Buckinghamshire stately home where Nightingale’s sister lived, now a National Trust property.
The letters “illustrate the extent to which Nightingale’s early life, while enormously privileged and cultured, was heavily constrained”, according to Paul Crawford, professor of health humanities at the University of Nottingham and one of the book’s four authors.
“When Nightingale first became famous, people marvelled at the idea that someone used to life in a country house would give that up in order to nurse among squalor. This reinforced the hagiography and myth-making. But for her the opposite was true – country-house life was so constrained by sharply defined expectations and scrutiny.”
Another unpublished letter, written in 1856 by a family member to William Nightingale, records a “festival of peace” in which hundreds of Derbyshire villagers celebrated the end of the Crimean war. It shows how the nation’s most famous contemporary heroine was understood on a local level without nationalist triumphalism, Crawford said.
The letter records: “There were miners, ploughmen, weavers, sawyers and stoneworkers, farmers and their wives … There certainly was a good spirit prevailing … Children … sang their hymns and spiritual songs … Then we moved down to the lower part of the field to await fireworks, waiting time well filled by cheers and music … Three times three for Florence Nightingale …
“There was a figure as large as life of Miss Nightingale, dressed in a white skirt and blue jacket, compliment doubtless to sailors, seated in a chair, cushion underfoot and inscribed above in flowers ‘The Good Samaritan’.”
