FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
Florence Nightingale was one of the most famous and influential of Victorian Londoners, but she hid away from the public gaze. The curious might catch a glimpse of her as she rode in Hyde Park in her carriage, but for the most part, she kept strictly to her rooms in South Street, off Park Lane. The people in power – leading politicians, mathematicians, authors and engineers – were forced to visit to her in order to obtain her advice. Her experience of the horrors of Scutari Barracks, the British base hospital in the Crimean War, made her in demand to work on the health reforms that
19th century London so desperately needed, including the design of St Thomas’ Hospital on the banks of the river Thames.
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Natasha McEnroe is the Director of the Florence Nightingale Museum. She previously worked for the National Trust, the Victoria and Albert Museum and was curator of Dr Johnson’s House on Fleet Street. Her research interests focus on 18th and 19th-century medical humanities. |
