July 26, 2025 • 25 mins
Explore the extraordinary life of Florence Nightingale through the eyes of renowned journalist and author, Sarah Tooley. Known for her biographies, including that of Queen Victoria, Tooley provides a captivating insight into Nightingales life. Published originally in 1904, the biography details the life of Nightingale, hailed as the founder of modern nursing. Beyond nursing, Nightingale was an accomplished statistician, social reformer, feminist, and author. This comprehensive biography is as riveting as it is educational, with Tooleys expert storytelling making it a must-listen.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter twenty three of the Life of Florence Nightingale by
Sarah Tully. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
The Nursing of the Sick Poor, Origin of the Liverpool
Home and Training School, Interest in the Sick Paupers, Una
and the Lion. A tribute to Sister Agnes Jones, Letter
(00:21):
to Miss Florence Lee's plea for a home for nurses,
on the question of paid nurses, Queen Victoria's Jubilee Nursing
Institute Rules for Probationers. Nursing is an art, and if
it is to be made, an art, requires as exclusive
a devotion, as hard a preparation as any painters or
(00:45):
sculptor's work. For what is the having to do with
dead canvas or cold marble, compared with having to do
with the living body the temple of God's spirit. It
is one of the fine arts, I had almost said,
the finest of the fine arts, Florence Nightingale. There is
(01:06):
no branch of sick nursing which appeals more strongly to
Miss Nightingale than the care of the sick poor. It
was as a visitor in the homes of her poorer
neighbors at Lee Hurston Embley that she began her philanthropic work,
and though the outbreak of the Crimean War drew her
into the public arena and concentrated her attention on the army,
(01:26):
she had not ceased to feel the importance of attending
to the needs of the sick poor, and repeatedly drew
attention to the fact that England was behind other nations
in providing for the sick poor at home and in infirmaries.
She recognized also that for this work a special training
was needed. A nurse who had received a course of
(01:47):
instruction in a hospital was not necessarily competent to nurse
the poor in their own homes. Special knowledge and special
experience were needed before a woman, however, skilled in the
technical side of nursing, could become a good district nurse.
About the same period that Miss Nightingale was establishing and
(02:08):
organizing her training school for nurses at Saint Thomas's Hospital,
she was also working in conjunction with mister William Rathbone
m P and other philanthropic people to found a special
training school for nurses for the poor. It was at
her suggestion that this branch of pioneer work was started
in connection with the Liverpool Infirmary, which had already made
(02:31):
some provision on similar lines. The Prospectus for the Liverpool
Training Home for Nurses was made public in eighteen sixty
one two and a commodious building was subsequently erected in
the grounds of the infirmary. In eighteen sixty five, Miss
Nightingale wrote an introduction to a work describing the origin
(02:51):
and organization of the Liverpool School and Home for Nurses.
It is the old story often told, she writes, but
this book opens a new chapter of it. He gives
us hope for a better state of things. An institution
for training nurses in connection with the infirmary has been
built and organized. This is a matter of necessity because
(03:14):
all who wish to nurse efficiently must learn how to
nurse in a hospital. Nursing, especially that most important of
all its branches, nursing of the sick poor at home,
is no amateur work. To do it as it ought
to be done, requires knowledge, practice, self abnegation, and, as
(03:35):
is so well said here, direct obedience to an activity
under the highest of all masters and from the highest
of all motives. It is an essential part of the
daily service of the Christian Church. It has never been otherwise.
It has proved itself superior to all religious divisions, and
(03:55):
is destined by God's blessing to supply an opening, the
great value of which in our densely peopled towns has
been unaccountably overlooked, until within these few years, with such
noble words did Florence Nightingale usher in a movement which
is now spread to all parts of the Kingdom. There
(04:16):
is not now a workhouse infirmary which has not its
trained nurses in place of the rough handed and unskilled inmate,
nor any town and few villages which have not some
provision for nursing the sick poor in their own homes.
And our beloved Queen Victoria found it the worthiest object
to which she could devote the people's offering in commemoration
(04:39):
of her jubilee. The main objects of the Pioneer Training
Home at Liverpool were one to provide thoroughly educated professional
nurses for the poor, two to provide district nurses for
the poor, three to provide sick nurses for private families.
(05:00):
Miss Nightingale watched the progress of the home with keen interest,
and gave her advice from time to time, she was
also actively engaged in promoting workhouse reform. A sick pauper
was to her a human being, not a chattel to
be handed over to the tender mercies of the Mister
Bumbles and missus Corney's. It afforded her great satisfaction that too,
(05:25):
out of the first lot of nurses which left her
Saint Thomas's Training School went as matrons to workhouse infirmaries.
A reform in workhouse hospitals has been brought about by
Mister Gathorne Hardy's Metropolitan Poor Act of eighteen sixty seven,
but the introduction of trained nurses on the Nightingale system
(05:46):
grew directly out of the experience and information which followed
the founding of the Liverpool Training Home. Hitherto, the workhouse
nurses were the pauper women, untrustworthy and unskilled. At Brownlow Hill,
Liverpool Infirmary, Mister Rathbone relates that there were twelve hundred
beds occupied by people in all stages of every kind
(06:10):
of disease, and the only assistants of the two women
officers who superintended the nursing were pauper women who were
as untrustworthy as they were unskillful. This was a fair
example of workhouse infirmaries all over the country. The Select
Vestry of Liverpool, having received an anonymous offer to defray
(06:32):
the cost of the experiment for three years, consented to
try Miss Nightingale's plan with her assistance. Miss Agnes Jones,
a lady who had been trained at Kaiserwerth like Miss
Nightingale and also at the Nightingale School at Saint Thomas's,
was appointed Lady Superintendent, and she brought with her a
staff of twelve nurses from Saint Thomas's. At first, Miss
(06:56):
Jones tried to get extra help by training the able
body pauper women as nurses, but out of fifty six,
not one proved able to pass the necessary examination, and
were still the greater number used their first salary to
get drunk. The painful fact was established that not a
single respectable and trustworthy nurse could be found amongst the
(07:20):
workhouse inmates, and the infirmary nursing had to be taken
entirely out of their hands. After a two years trial,
Miss Jones's experiment with her trained and educated nurses proved
so satisfactory that the guardians determined never to return to
the old system and to charge the rates with the
permanent establishment of the new one. To the deep regret
(07:43):
of everyone, however, Miss Agnes Jones sank under the labors
which she had undertaken, and died in February eighteen sixty eight.
Miss Nightingale contributed a beautiful tribute to the memory of
her friend and fellow worker in Good Words for June
eighteen sixty eight under the title Una and the Lion,
(08:04):
which subsequently formed the introduction to the memorials of Agnes
Elizabeth Jones by her sister. One woman has died, writes
Miss Nightingale, a woman attractive and rich, and young and witty,
yet a veiled and silent woman, distinguished by no other
genius but the divine Genius, working hard to train herself
(08:28):
in order to train others to walk in the footsteps
of him who went about doing good. She died as
she had lived at her post in one of the
largest workhouse infirmaries in this kingdom, the first in which
trained nursing has been introduced. When her whole life an
image rise before me. So far from thinking the story
(08:50):
of Una and her Lion, a myth I say here
is Una in real flesh and blood, Una, and her
paupers more untamable the lions. In less than three years,
she had reduced one of the most disorderly hospital populations
in the world to something like Christian discipline, and had
(09:11):
converted a vestry to the conviction of the economy as
well as humanity of nursing pauper sick by trained nurses.
We must refrain from quoting more of this singularly fine
tribute of the chief to one of her ablest generals
in the army of nursing reform, with the exception of
the beautiful closing words. Let us add living flowers to
(09:36):
her grave lilies with full hands, not fleeting primroses, not
dying flowers. Let us bring the work of our hands,
and our heads and our hearts to finish her work
which God has so blessed. Let us not merely rest
in peace, but let hers be the life which stirs
(09:57):
up to fight the good, fight against the vice and
sin and misery and wretchedness, as she did the call
to arms which she was ever obeying. The Son of
God goes forth to war, who follows in his train?
O daughters of God, are there so few to answer.
(10:19):
One cannot leave the subject without a reference to the
influence which Miss Nightingale's own early example had had on
the gifted woman, whose memory she extolled. On the eve
of going into training at Saint Thomas's, Miss Agnes Jones wrote,
it is well that I shall, at my first outset
in hospital work, bear the name of Nightingale Probationer, For
(10:43):
that honored name is associated with my first thought of
hospital life in the winter of fifty four, when I
had those first earnest longings for work, and had for
months so little to satisfy them. How I wished I
were competent to join the Nightingale band. And when they
started for the Crimea, I listened to the animad versions
(11:05):
of many, but I almost worshiped her, who braved all,
and I felt she must succeed. The system inaugurated by
Miss Agnes Jones at Liverpool Infirmary spread over the country,
and Miss Nightingale had the satisfaction of seeing, in a
comparatively short time a great improvement in the nursing and
(11:25):
treatment of the sick in workhouses. Jails had long been
visited and reformed, Lunatic asylums open to inspection, and it
seemed unaccountable that the misery of sick workhouse paupers should
have been so long overlooked footnote. Miss Luisa Twining in
eighteen fifty four began her pioneer efforts in workhouse reform,
(11:48):
which resulted in eighteen seventy four in the establishment of
the Workhouse Nursing Association and footnote. The success of the
introduction of trained nurses into workhouse gave an impulse to
sick poor nursing generally, and in eighteen sixty eight the
East London Nursing Society was founded by the Honorable Missus
(12:09):
Stuart Wortley and mister Robert Wigram. In eighteen seventy four,
the movement received a further important impulse from the formation
of the National Nursing Association to provide skilled nurses for
the sick poor in their own homes, to establish district
organizations in London and in the country, and to establish
(12:30):
a training school for district nurses in connection with one
of the London hospitals. This work appealed most strongly to
Miss Nightingale, and she expressed her sympathy in the following
letter to that devoted pioneer of district nursing, Miss Florence Lees,
now missus Dacre Craven, who was the indefatigable Honorary Secretary
(12:51):
of the newly founded National Nursing Association. Footnote. Miss Lees
was described by King Late as the gifted and radiant
pupil of Florence Nightingale. She was a probationer at the
Saint Thomas's Training School when it was temporarily located in
the old Surrey Gardens and footnote as to your success,
(13:15):
writes Miss Nightingale, what is not your success to raise
the homes of your patients so that they never fall
back again to dirt and disorder. Such is your nurse's
influence to pull through life and death cases, cases which
it would be an honor to pull through with all
the impertinences of hospitals or of the richest in the land,
(13:38):
and this without any sick room impertinences at all. To
keep whole families out of pauperism by preventing the home
from being broken up and nursing the breadwinner back to health.
The next point in Miss Nightingale's letter was one which
was at the root of the movement and which she
invariably emphasized to drag the noble art of nursing out
(14:01):
of the sink of relief doles. It was believed that
nothing would so effectually stop the pauperizing of the people
by indiscriminate charity as the trained nurse in the homes
of the sick poor, who would teach her patients how
to best help themselves. To carry out continues Miss Nightingale,
the practical principles of preventing disease by stopping its causes
(14:26):
and the causes of infections which spread disease. Last, but
not least, to show a common life able to sustain
the workers in this saving but hardest work under a
working head who will personally keep the training and nursing
at its highest point. Is not this a great success?
(14:47):
District nursing so solitary, so without the cheer and the
stimulus of a big core of fellow workers in the
bustle of a public hospital, but also without many of
its cares and strains, requires what it has with you,
the constant supervision and inspiration of a genius of nursing
and a common home. May it spread with such a
(15:11):
standard over the whole of London and the whole of
the land. Two years later, eighteen seventy six, Miss Nightingale
made an eloquent plea in a long letter to the
Times for the establishment of a home for nurses in
connection with the National Society for Providing Trained Nurses for
(15:31):
the Poor. This letter was later reprinted as a pamphlet
on Trained Nursing for the Sick Poor, especially pleading for
a central home for nurses. She wrote, if you give
nurses a bad home or no home at all, you
will have only nurses who live in a bad home
(15:52):
or no home at all. And she emphasizes the necessity
for the district nurse to have a knowledge of how
to nurse the home as well as the patient, and
for that reason she should live in a place of
comfort herself, free from the discomforts of private lodgings. Miss
Nightingale's plea bore fruit in the establishment of the Central
(16:13):
Home for Nurses twenty three Bloomsbury Square, under the able
management of Miss Florence Lees. Nothing pleased Miss Nightingale better
than to get reports of the experience of the district
nurses amongst the poor, and to hear how the poor
received their visits and what impression they were able to
make on the habits of the people. She was specially
(16:34):
delighted with the story of a puny slum boy who
vigorously rebelled against a tubbing which Miss Lees was administering.
Willie don't like to be bathed, He roared, O me
basted devil. If you like the implication that Miss Lees
was capable of washing the devil white, Miss Nightingale pronounced
(16:55):
the finest compliment ever paid to a district nurse. She
has always impressed upon district nurses the need not only
of knowing how to give advice, but how to carry
it out. The nurse must be able to show how
to clean up a home, and Miss Nightingale used frequently
to quote the case of a bishop who cleansed the
(17:17):
pigsties of the normal Training school of which he was
master as an example. One of the most episcopal acts
ever done was her comment at first the district nurses
were recruited almost entirely from the class known as gentlewomen,
as it was thought both by Miss Nightingale and Miss Lees,
that it required women of special refinement and education to
(17:40):
exercise influence over the poor in their own homes. Also,
one of the objects of the National Association was to
raise the standard of nursing in the eyes of the public.
It was soon proved that the lady nurses did not
shirk any of the disagreeable and menial offices which fall
to the lot of the district nurse. Broadly speaking, it
(18:04):
is only the educated women with a vocation for nursing
who will undertake such duties. The woman who merely wants
to earn an income will choose hospital or private nursing.
In the earlier stages of the movement, the district nurses
received high remuneration, and on this question of fees, the
Queen of Nurses may be quoted. I have seen somewhere
(18:26):
in print that nursing is a profession to be followed
by the lower middle class. Shall we say that painting
or sculpture is a profession to be followed by the
lower middle class? Why limit the class at all? Or
shall we say that God is only to be served
in his sick by the lower middle class. It appears
(18:46):
to be the most futile of all distinctions to classify
as between paid and unpaid art, so between paid and
unpaid nursing to make into a test as circumstances adventitious,
as whether the hair is black or brown, viz. Whether
people have private meetings or not, whether they are obliged
(19:07):
or not to work at their art or their nursing
for a livelihood. Probably no person ever did that well
which he did only for money. Certainly no person ever
did that well which he did not work at as
hard as if he did it solely for money. If
by amateur in art or in nursing are meant those
(19:28):
who take it up for play, it is not art
at all. It is not nursing at all. You never
yet made an artist by paying him well, but an
artist ought to be paid well. A most important outcome
of the introduction of a system of trained nurses for
the sick poor was the establishment of the Queen's Jubilee Nurses.
(19:50):
Queen Victoria, moved by the great benefit which the National
Nursing Association had conferred, decided on the representations of the
Committee of the Women Jubilee Fund Furthered by Princess Christian,
to devote the seventy thousand pounds subscribed to the extension
of this work. Footnote Missus Daker Craven had in eighteen
(20:13):
seventy seven proposed in a letter laid before Queen Victoria
that a part of the fund of Saint Catharine's Royal
Hospital should be devoted to founding a training institute for
district nurses of gentle birth, to be called Queen's Nurses
and footnote. The interest of the fund, amounting to two
(20:33):
thousand pounds per annum, was applied to founding an institution
for the education and maintenance of nurses for tending the
sick poor in their own homes, with branch centers all
over the Kingdom. The charter for the new foundation was
executed on September twentieth, eighteen ninety. The Central Institute was
(20:54):
at first connected with Saint Catharine's Royal Hospital Regent's Park,
an institution which had always been under the patronage of
the Queens of England since it was founded by Queen Matilda,
the wife of Stephen, at Saint Catharine's Wharf, near the
Tower of London. Subsequently, the headquarters of the Queen Victoria's
Jubilee Nursing Institute was removed to Victoria Street. Central homes
(21:18):
have also been established at Edinburgh Dublin and Cardiff and
district homes all over the Kingdom are affiliated to the Institute.
The National Association for Providing trained Nurses for the Sick Poor,
in which Miss Nightingale had so deeply interested herself, was
affiliated to Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute, but it still has
(21:39):
its original headquarters at the Nurses Home twenty three Bloomsbury Square,
so ably managed by the present Lady Superintendent, Miss Hadden.
The chairman of the Executive Committee is Henry Bonham Carter Esquire,
an old friend and fellow worker of Miss Nightingale, while
the Honorary Secretary is the Reverend Daker Craven, Rector of
(22:00):
Saint Andrew's Holborn, whose wife was Miss Florence Lees, the
first Superintendent General of the Home and Branches, and one
of Miss Nightingale's devoted friends. Her Royal Highness Princess Christian
is President of the Association. There is probably no movement
which has spread over the country so rapidly and which
(22:21):
appeals to the goodwill of all classes as the nursing
of the sick poor in their own homes, and its
success has been one of the chief satisfactions of Miss
Nightingale's life. She is always eager to hear of fresh
recruits being added to the nursing army of the Sick Poor,
and it may prove of interest to quote the regulations
(22:42):
issued by the National Association Regulations for the Training of
Nurses for the Sick Poor in their subsequent engagement. One.
A nurse desiring to be trained in district nursing must
have previously received at least two years training in a
large general high hospital approved by the Committee, and bring
(23:02):
satisfactory testimonials as to capacity and conduct. Two. If considered
by the Superintendent likely to prove suitable for district nursing,
she will be received on trial for one month. If
at the end of that time she is considered suitable,
she will continue her course of training with technical class
instruction for five months longer. Three. The nurse will, at
(23:27):
the end of her month of trial, be required to
sign an agreement with the Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute that
she will, for one year from the date of the
completion of her district training, continue to work as a
district nurse wherever the District Council of the Queen's Institute
may require her services. Four. While under training, the nurse
(23:48):
will be subject to the authority of the Superintendent of
the training Home, and she must conform to the rules
and regulations of the home. She will be further subject
as to her work, to the inspection of the Inspector
of the Queen's Institute. Five. If during the time of
her training the nurse be found inefficient or otherwise unsuitable,
(24:11):
her engagement may, with the consent of the Inspector of
the Queen's Institute, be terminated by the Superintendent of the
Training Home at a week's notice. In the case of
misconduct or neglect of duty, she will be liable to
immediate dismissal by the Superintendent of the Training Home, with
the concurrence of the Inspector of the Queen's Institute. Six.
(24:33):
During her six months training, she will receive a payment
of twelve pounds ten shillings, payable one half at the
end of three months from admission and the remainder at
the end of six months. But should her engagement be
terminated from any cause before the end of her training,
she will not, without the consent of the Queen's Institute,
(24:53):
be entitled to any part payment. She will be provided
with a full board laundry, a separate for furnished bedroom
or cubicle with a sitting room in common, as well
as a uniform dress which she will be required to
wear at all times when on duty. The uniform must
be considered the property of the Institute. Seven. On the
(25:15):
satisfactory completion of her training, the nurse will be recommended
for engagement as a district nurse under some association affiliated
to the Queen's Institute, the salary usually commencing at thirty
pounds per annum end of Chapter twenty three
Chapter twenty three of the Life of Florence Nightingale by
Sarah Tully. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
The Nursing of the Sick Poor, Origin of the Liverpool
Home and Training School, Interest in the Sick Paupers, Una
and the Lion. A tribute to Sister Agnes Jones, Letter
(00:21):
to Miss Florence Lee's plea for a home for nurses,
on the question of paid nurses, Queen Victoria's Jubilee Nursing
Institute Rules for Probationers. Nursing is an art, and if
it is to be made, an art, requires as exclusive
a devotion, as hard a preparation as any painters or
(00:45):
sculptor's work. For what is the having to do with
dead canvas or cold marble, compared with having to do
with the living body the temple of God's spirit. It
is one of the fine arts, I had almost said,
the finest of the fine arts, Florence Nightingale. There is
(01:06):
no branch of sick nursing which appeals more strongly to
Miss Nightingale than the care of the sick poor. It
was as a visitor in the homes of her poorer
neighbors at Lee Hurston Embley that she began her philanthropic work,
and though the outbreak of the Crimean War drew her
into the public arena and concentrated her attention on the army,
(01:26):
she had not ceased to feel the importance of attending
to the needs of the sick poor, and repeatedly drew
attention to the fact that England was behind other nations
in providing for the sick poor at home and in infirmaries.
She recognized also that for this work a special training
was needed. A nurse who had received a course of
(01:47):
instruction in a hospital was not necessarily competent to nurse
the poor in their own homes. Special knowledge and special
experience were needed before a woman, however, skilled in the
technical side of nursing, could become a good district nurse.
About the same period that Miss Nightingale was establishing and
(02:08):
organizing her training school for nurses at Saint Thomas's Hospital,
she was also working in conjunction with mister William Rathbone
m P and other philanthropic people to found a special
training school for nurses for the poor. It was at
her suggestion that this branch of pioneer work was started
in connection with the Liverpool Infirmary, which had already made
(02:31):
some provision on similar lines. The Prospectus for the Liverpool
Training Home for Nurses was made public in eighteen sixty
one two and a commodious building was subsequently erected in
the grounds of the infirmary. In eighteen sixty five, Miss
Nightingale wrote an introduction to a work describing the origin
(02:51):
and organization of the Liverpool School and Home for Nurses.
It is the old story often told, she writes, but
this book opens a new chapter of it. He gives
us hope for a better state of things. An institution
for training nurses in connection with the infirmary has been
built and organized. This is a matter of necessity because
(03:14):
all who wish to nurse efficiently must learn how to
nurse in a hospital. Nursing, especially that most important of
all its branches, nursing of the sick poor at home,
is no amateur work. To do it as it ought
to be done, requires knowledge, practice, self abnegation, and, as
(03:35):
is so well said here, direct obedience to an activity
under the highest of all masters and from the highest
of all motives. It is an essential part of the
daily service of the Christian Church. It has never been otherwise.
It has proved itself superior to all religious divisions, and
(03:55):
is destined by God's blessing to supply an opening, the
great value of which in our densely peopled towns has
been unaccountably overlooked, until within these few years, with such
noble words did Florence Nightingale usher in a movement which
is now spread to all parts of the Kingdom. There
(04:16):
is not now a workhouse infirmary which has not its
trained nurses in place of the rough handed and unskilled inmate,
nor any town and few villages which have not some
provision for nursing the sick poor in their own homes.
And our beloved Queen Victoria found it the worthiest object
to which she could devote the people's offering in commemoration
(04:39):
of her jubilee. The main objects of the Pioneer Training
Home at Liverpool were one to provide thoroughly educated professional
nurses for the poor, two to provide district nurses for
the poor, three to provide sick nurses for private families.
(05:00):
Miss Nightingale watched the progress of the home with keen interest,
and gave her advice from time to time, she was
also actively engaged in promoting workhouse reform. A sick pauper
was to her a human being, not a chattel to
be handed over to the tender mercies of the Mister
Bumbles and missus Corney's. It afforded her great satisfaction that too,
(05:25):
out of the first lot of nurses which left her
Saint Thomas's Training School went as matrons to workhouse infirmaries.
A reform in workhouse hospitals has been brought about by
Mister Gathorne Hardy's Metropolitan Poor Act of eighteen sixty seven,
but the introduction of trained nurses on the Nightingale system
(05:46):
grew directly out of the experience and information which followed
the founding of the Liverpool Training Home. Hitherto, the workhouse
nurses were the pauper women, untrustworthy and unskilled. At Brownlow Hill,
Liverpool Infirmary, Mister Rathbone relates that there were twelve hundred
beds occupied by people in all stages of every kind
(06:10):
of disease, and the only assistants of the two women
officers who superintended the nursing were pauper women who were
as untrustworthy as they were unskillful. This was a fair
example of workhouse infirmaries all over the country. The Select
Vestry of Liverpool, having received an anonymous offer to defray
(06:32):
the cost of the experiment for three years, consented to
try Miss Nightingale's plan with her assistance. Miss Agnes Jones,
a lady who had been trained at Kaiserwerth like Miss
Nightingale and also at the Nightingale School at Saint Thomas's,
was appointed Lady Superintendent, and she brought with her a
staff of twelve nurses from Saint Thomas's. At first, Miss
(06:56):
Jones tried to get extra help by training the able
body pauper women as nurses, but out of fifty six,
not one proved able to pass the necessary examination, and
were still the greater number used their first salary to
get drunk. The painful fact was established that not a
single respectable and trustworthy nurse could be found amongst the
(07:20):
workhouse inmates, and the infirmary nursing had to be taken
entirely out of their hands. After a two years trial,
Miss Jones's experiment with her trained and educated nurses proved
so satisfactory that the guardians determined never to return to
the old system and to charge the rates with the
permanent establishment of the new one. To the deep regret
(07:43):
of everyone, however, Miss Agnes Jones sank under the labors
which she had undertaken, and died in February eighteen sixty eight.
Miss Nightingale contributed a beautiful tribute to the memory of
her friend and fellow worker in Good Words for June
eighteen sixty eight under the title Una and the Lion,
(08:04):
which subsequently formed the introduction to the memorials of Agnes
Elizabeth Jones by her sister. One woman has died, writes
Miss Nightingale, a woman attractive and rich, and young and witty,
yet a veiled and silent woman, distinguished by no other
genius but the divine Genius, working hard to train herself
(08:28):
in order to train others to walk in the footsteps
of him who went about doing good. She died as
she had lived at her post in one of the
largest workhouse infirmaries in this kingdom, the first in which
trained nursing has been introduced. When her whole life an
image rise before me. So far from thinking the story
(08:50):
of Una and her Lion, a myth I say here
is Una in real flesh and blood, Una, and her
paupers more untamable the lions. In less than three years,
she had reduced one of the most disorderly hospital populations
in the world to something like Christian discipline, and had
(09:11):
converted a vestry to the conviction of the economy as
well as humanity of nursing pauper sick by trained nurses.
We must refrain from quoting more of this singularly fine
tribute of the chief to one of her ablest generals
in the army of nursing reform, with the exception of
the beautiful closing words. Let us add living flowers to
(09:36):
her grave lilies with full hands, not fleeting primroses, not
dying flowers. Let us bring the work of our hands,
and our heads and our hearts to finish her work
which God has so blessed. Let us not merely rest
in peace, but let hers be the life which stirs
(09:57):
up to fight the good, fight against the vice and
sin and misery and wretchedness, as she did the call
to arms which she was ever obeying. The Son of
God goes forth to war, who follows in his train?
O daughters of God, are there so few to answer.
(10:19):
One cannot leave the subject without a reference to the
influence which Miss Nightingale's own early example had had on
the gifted woman, whose memory she extolled. On the eve
of going into training at Saint Thomas's, Miss Agnes Jones wrote,
it is well that I shall, at my first outset
in hospital work, bear the name of Nightingale Probationer, For
(10:43):
that honored name is associated with my first thought of
hospital life in the winter of fifty four, when I
had those first earnest longings for work, and had for
months so little to satisfy them. How I wished I
were competent to join the Nightingale band. And when they
started for the Crimea, I listened to the animad versions
(11:05):
of many, but I almost worshiped her, who braved all,
and I felt she must succeed. The system inaugurated by
Miss Agnes Jones at Liverpool Infirmary spread over the country,
and Miss Nightingale had the satisfaction of seeing, in a
comparatively short time a great improvement in the nursing and
(11:25):
treatment of the sick in workhouses. Jails had long been
visited and reformed, Lunatic asylums open to inspection, and it
seemed unaccountable that the misery of sick workhouse paupers should
have been so long overlooked footnote. Miss Luisa Twining in
eighteen fifty four began her pioneer efforts in workhouse reform,
(11:48):
which resulted in eighteen seventy four in the establishment of
the Workhouse Nursing Association and footnote. The success of the
introduction of trained nurses into workhouse gave an impulse to
sick poor nursing generally, and in eighteen sixty eight the
East London Nursing Society was founded by the Honorable Missus
(12:09):
Stuart Wortley and mister Robert Wigram. In eighteen seventy four,
the movement received a further important impulse from the formation
of the National Nursing Association to provide skilled nurses for
the sick poor in their own homes, to establish district
organizations in London and in the country, and to establish
(12:30):
a training school for district nurses in connection with one
of the London hospitals. This work appealed most strongly to
Miss Nightingale, and she expressed her sympathy in the following
letter to that devoted pioneer of district nursing, Miss Florence Lees,
now missus Dacre Craven, who was the indefatigable Honorary Secretary
(12:51):
of the newly founded National Nursing Association. Footnote. Miss Lees
was described by King Late as the gifted and radiant
pupil of Florence Nightingale. She was a probationer at the
Saint Thomas's Training School when it was temporarily located in
the old Surrey Gardens and footnote as to your success,
(13:15):
writes Miss Nightingale, what is not your success to raise
the homes of your patients so that they never fall
back again to dirt and disorder. Such is your nurse's
influence to pull through life and death cases, cases which
it would be an honor to pull through with all
the impertinences of hospitals or of the richest in the land,
(13:38):
and this without any sick room impertinences at all. To
keep whole families out of pauperism by preventing the home
from being broken up and nursing the breadwinner back to health.
The next point in Miss Nightingale's letter was one which
was at the root of the movement and which she
invariably emphasized to drag the noble art of nursing out
(14:01):
of the sink of relief doles. It was believed that
nothing would so effectually stop the pauperizing of the people
by indiscriminate charity as the trained nurse in the homes
of the sick poor, who would teach her patients how
to best help themselves. To carry out continues Miss Nightingale,
the practical principles of preventing disease by stopping its causes
(14:26):
and the causes of infections which spread disease. Last, but
not least, to show a common life able to sustain
the workers in this saving but hardest work under a
working head who will personally keep the training and nursing
at its highest point. Is not this a great success?
(14:47):
District nursing so solitary, so without the cheer and the
stimulus of a big core of fellow workers in the
bustle of a public hospital, but also without many of
its cares and strains, requires what it has with you,
the constant supervision and inspiration of a genius of nursing
and a common home. May it spread with such a
(15:11):
standard over the whole of London and the whole of
the land. Two years later, eighteen seventy six, Miss Nightingale
made an eloquent plea in a long letter to the
Times for the establishment of a home for nurses in
connection with the National Society for Providing Trained Nurses for
(15:31):
the Poor. This letter was later reprinted as a pamphlet
on Trained Nursing for the Sick Poor, especially pleading for
a central home for nurses. She wrote, if you give
nurses a bad home or no home at all, you
will have only nurses who live in a bad home
(15:52):
or no home at all. And she emphasizes the necessity
for the district nurse to have a knowledge of how
to nurse the home as well as the patient, and
for that reason she should live in a place of
comfort herself, free from the discomforts of private lodgings. Miss
Nightingale's plea bore fruit in the establishment of the Central
(16:13):
Home for Nurses twenty three Bloomsbury Square, under the able
management of Miss Florence Lees. Nothing pleased Miss Nightingale better
than to get reports of the experience of the district
nurses amongst the poor, and to hear how the poor
received their visits and what impression they were able to
make on the habits of the people. She was specially
(16:34):
delighted with the story of a puny slum boy who
vigorously rebelled against a tubbing which Miss Lees was administering.
Willie don't like to be bathed, He roared, O me
basted devil. If you like the implication that Miss Lees
was capable of washing the devil white, Miss Nightingale pronounced
(16:55):
the finest compliment ever paid to a district nurse. She
has always impressed upon district nurses the need not only
of knowing how to give advice, but how to carry
it out. The nurse must be able to show how
to clean up a home, and Miss Nightingale used frequently
to quote the case of a bishop who cleansed the
(17:17):
pigsties of the normal Training school of which he was
master as an example. One of the most episcopal acts
ever done was her comment at first the district nurses
were recruited almost entirely from the class known as gentlewomen,
as it was thought both by Miss Nightingale and Miss Lees,
that it required women of special refinement and education to
(17:40):
exercise influence over the poor in their own homes. Also,
one of the objects of the National Association was to
raise the standard of nursing in the eyes of the public.
It was soon proved that the lady nurses did not
shirk any of the disagreeable and menial offices which fall
to the lot of the district nurse. Broadly speaking, it
(18:04):
is only the educated women with a vocation for nursing
who will undertake such duties. The woman who merely wants
to earn an income will choose hospital or private nursing.
In the earlier stages of the movement, the district nurses
received high remuneration, and on this question of fees, the
Queen of Nurses may be quoted. I have seen somewhere
(18:26):
in print that nursing is a profession to be followed
by the lower middle class. Shall we say that painting
or sculpture is a profession to be followed by the
lower middle class? Why limit the class at all? Or
shall we say that God is only to be served
in his sick by the lower middle class. It appears
(18:46):
to be the most futile of all distinctions to classify
as between paid and unpaid art, so between paid and
unpaid nursing to make into a test as circumstances adventitious,
as whether the hair is black or brown, viz. Whether
people have private meetings or not, whether they are obliged
(19:07):
or not to work at their art or their nursing
for a livelihood. Probably no person ever did that well
which he did only for money. Certainly no person ever
did that well which he did not work at as
hard as if he did it solely for money. If
by amateur in art or in nursing are meant those
(19:28):
who take it up for play, it is not art
at all. It is not nursing at all. You never
yet made an artist by paying him well, but an
artist ought to be paid well. A most important outcome
of the introduction of a system of trained nurses for
the sick poor was the establishment of the Queen's Jubilee Nurses.
(19:50):
Queen Victoria, moved by the great benefit which the National
Nursing Association had conferred, decided on the representations of the
Committee of the Women Jubilee Fund Furthered by Princess Christian,
to devote the seventy thousand pounds subscribed to the extension
of this work. Footnote Missus Daker Craven had in eighteen
(20:13):
seventy seven proposed in a letter laid before Queen Victoria
that a part of the fund of Saint Catharine's Royal
Hospital should be devoted to founding a training institute for
district nurses of gentle birth, to be called Queen's Nurses
and footnote. The interest of the fund, amounting to two
(20:33):
thousand pounds per annum, was applied to founding an institution
for the education and maintenance of nurses for tending the
sick poor in their own homes, with branch centers all
over the Kingdom. The charter for the new foundation was
executed on September twentieth, eighteen ninety. The Central Institute was
(20:54):
at first connected with Saint Catharine's Royal Hospital Regent's Park,
an institution which had always been under the patronage of
the Queens of England since it was founded by Queen Matilda,
the wife of Stephen, at Saint Catharine's Wharf, near the
Tower of London. Subsequently, the headquarters of the Queen Victoria's
Jubilee Nursing Institute was removed to Victoria Street. Central homes
(21:18):
have also been established at Edinburgh Dublin and Cardiff and
district homes all over the Kingdom are affiliated to the Institute.
The National Association for Providing trained Nurses for the Sick Poor,
in which Miss Nightingale had so deeply interested herself, was
affiliated to Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute, but it still has
(21:39):
its original headquarters at the Nurses Home twenty three Bloomsbury Square,
so ably managed by the present Lady Superintendent, Miss Hadden.
The chairman of the Executive Committee is Henry Bonham Carter Esquire,
an old friend and fellow worker of Miss Nightingale, while
the Honorary Secretary is the Reverend Daker Craven, Rector of
(22:00):
Saint Andrew's Holborn, whose wife was Miss Florence Lees, the
first Superintendent General of the Home and Branches, and one
of Miss Nightingale's devoted friends. Her Royal Highness Princess Christian
is President of the Association. There is probably no movement
which has spread over the country so rapidly and which
(22:21):
appeals to the goodwill of all classes as the nursing
of the sick poor in their own homes, and its
success has been one of the chief satisfactions of Miss
Nightingale's life. She is always eager to hear of fresh
recruits being added to the nursing army of the Sick Poor,
and it may prove of interest to quote the regulations
(22:42):
issued by the National Association Regulations for the Training of
Nurses for the Sick Poor in their subsequent engagement. One.
A nurse desiring to be trained in district nursing must
have previously received at least two years training in a
large general high hospital approved by the Committee, and bring
(23:02):
satisfactory testimonials as to capacity and conduct. Two. If considered
by the Superintendent likely to prove suitable for district nursing,
she will be received on trial for one month. If
at the end of that time she is considered suitable,
she will continue her course of training with technical class
instruction for five months longer. Three. The nurse will, at
(23:27):
the end of her month of trial, be required to
sign an agreement with the Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute that
she will, for one year from the date of the
completion of her district training, continue to work as a
district nurse wherever the District Council of the Queen's Institute
may require her services. Four. While under training, the nurse
(23:48):
will be subject to the authority of the Superintendent of
the training Home, and she must conform to the rules
and regulations of the home. She will be further subject
as to her work, to the inspection of the Inspector
of the Queen's Institute. Five. If during the time of
her training the nurse be found inefficient or otherwise unsuitable,
(24:11):
her engagement may, with the consent of the Inspector of
the Queen's Institute, be terminated by the Superintendent of the
Training Home at a week's notice. In the case of
misconduct or neglect of duty, she will be liable to
immediate dismissal by the Superintendent of the Training Home, with
the concurrence of the Inspector of the Queen's Institute. Six.
(24:33):
During her six months training, she will receive a payment
of twelve pounds ten shillings, payable one half at the
end of three months from admission and the remainder at
the end of six months. But should her engagement be
terminated from any cause before the end of her training,
she will not, without the consent of the Queen's Institute,
(24:53):
be entitled to any part payment. She will be provided
with a full board laundry, a separate for furnished bedroom
or cubicle with a sitting room in common, as well
as a uniform dress which she will be required to
wear at all times when on duty. The uniform must
be considered the property of the Institute. Seven. On the
(25:15):
satisfactory completion of her training, the nurse will be recommended
for engagement as a district nurse under some association affiliated
to the Queen's Institute, the salary usually commencing at thirty
pounds per annum end of Chapter twenty three
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