Nightingale , Florence , 1820-1910 , nursing reformer

Florence Nightingale was born to a wealthy family in 1820. She entered into cottage visiting and nursing early, and from 1844 to 1855 visited hospitals in London and abroad. Returning from an 1849-1850 tour of Egypt she visited the Kaiserswerth Institute for deaconesses and nurses and trained here as a nurse in 1851. In 1853 she became Superintendent of the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in London. In 1855 at the invitation of Sidney Herbert she took a party of nurses to the Crimean War, serving at the hospital in Scutari Barracks and also visiting Balaclava. On her return to the United Kingdom she engaged in a campaign for the sanitary reforms that she had instituted in the Crimea to be accepted as general practice. Her campaigning led to the foundation of the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital, London. She was also involved in campaigning for humanitarian aid during the Franco-Prussian War, for improved sanitation in India, and for cottage hospitals in the United Kingdom. She died in 1910.