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NIGHTINGALE, PUBLIC HEALTH AND VICTORIAN SOCIETY
From the British Library, London

Part 1: Correspondence relating to the Crimea, India and Public Health Reform

 

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION BY DR LYNN MCDONALD, CONSULTANT EDITOR, Department of Sociology and Anthropology,

University of Guelph

Editor of 'The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale'

The British Library holds the largest and most diverse collection of original material written by Florence Nightingale in the world. A Nightingale scholar who could visit only one archive would surely choose this one, although there are some 200 worldwide with original material, and two others in London of substantial size. It is probably the most used archive for Nightingale research, but is still amazingly under-utilized, and whole sections of it have escaped the attention of scholars. Microfilm publication by Adam Matthew Publications Ltd. will make this superb collection (a very large portion of it to be precise) readily available to scholars.

It is hardly a moment too soon. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is still a well known person, recognized as a war heroine and the major founder of the modern profession of nursing. There is an enormous and growing literature on her as scholars in many countries and with diverse interests continue to find her intriguing and even inspiring. But her reputation has been sullied as heroines in general have fallen from favour and her own profession of nursing has largely lost interest in its history. Attacks on Nightingale have become frequent, while speculations as to her illness have grown wilder and wilder. All this scholarly work has been overwhelmingly based on secondary sources (which quote each other and hence get worse every year). The availability of original sources will only foster better research on Nightingale.

The Adam Matthew microfilm publication occurs at the same time as the publication of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, 16 volumes in print, eventually with full electronic publication of the transcribed texts and related data bases. (I am the director of this project, working with a team of scholars; the publisher is Wilfrid Laurier University Press. For information on the project see our website: www.sociology.uoguelph.ca/fnightingale; for the press: www.press@wlu.ca) The two endeavours are complementary, for the edited works stimulate scholarly attention and fussy scholars want to see the original letters (which we do not publish--we publish transcriptions). The Collected Works, while focused on Nightingale, is producing material on a good range of important 19th century people, from Queen Victoria, General Gordon, J.S. Mill, W.E. Gladstone, public health and India experts, among others. Scholars in a diverse range of fields might also profit from the microfilm production.


Background to the Collection

The British Librarys wonderful collection almost never happened. Nightingales will of July 1896 expressly stipulated the destruction of all my letters papers and manuscripts (with the exception of the papers relating to India and the other exception hereinbefore contained)...also that the pencil notes in the pages of any religious books may be destroyed together with the books. She subsequently relented, in 1901 revoking that clause, to bequeath the letters, papers, manuscripts and books which I thereby requested might be destroyed and the majority of which I believe should be destroyed to her much esteemed cousin, Henry Bonham Carter, a friend from childhood, later secretary of the Nightingale Fund Council and a close colleague for decades of work.

Henry Bonham Carter, mercifully for Nightingale researchers, took quite a different view. The massive amount of surviving materials was first assembled for purposes of a two-volume official biography, E.T. Cooks Life of Florence Nightingale, 1913, and then given to the British Library (in installments). Rosalind Nash, the daughter of another cousin, also worked on assembling the material, although, alas, she is also responsible for the destruction of some of it. This assembling entailed asking the recipients of Nightingale letters to surrender them for copies to be made. Some letters were permanently given back, so that the ultimate collection contains many of the original letters as well as Nightingales drafts and copies of correspondence. As well there are copious and informative drafts at various stages of papers, articles and books, annotated publications and government reports.

Since Nightingale wrote letters and notes nearly every day of her life, and because her correspondents considered her letters important and kept them, and indeed often made copies of them for others, the surviving oeuvre is enormous. All the Nightingales were collectors who hated to throw anything away. Sometimes she marked a letter Private or Private Burn, sometimes with numerous underlinings, but most people, it seems, did not heed her command (some did). Moreover, in some cases when she instructed her correspondent to destroy the letter she kept her own copy! The result is that there is a paper trail for a very large part of the important work she did throughout her long life. Not all of this is in the British Library, of course, hence the value of the Collected Works. Indeed it is only by matching these British Library letters with others around the world that the full story can be unravelled, for often a letter in the British Library will make little sense without its answer in another collection, sometimes on another continent. But the British Library is the core.

Most of the Nightingale Collection at the British Library arrived in three separate, but substantial, gifts and are relatively well known in the scholarly world. In the time before the collection was electronically accessible these were easy to find. (Before the manuscripts were moved to the new British Library building in 2001 scholars had to use a large number of cumbersome printed catalogues to find sources and often missed key materials.) The Adam Matthew microfilms include material from the lesser-known volumes as well as the three major sets, the last of which is incorrectly identified as Final Part.


Neglected Material in the British Library Collection

Some extraordinarily interesting family correspondence is among these lesser-known volumes. Indeed the volume I would choose to take to a desert isle is Add Mss 46176 (in Part 2), Nightingales letters to her favourite cousin and her fathers heir, Shore or my boy Shore, William Shore Nightingale. These are variously whimsical and earnest; they include hopes and dreams, philosophy and science, jokes and private nicknames.

A nine-volume sequence of volumes, the last series to arrive at the British Library (after the so-called Final Part) also has some treasures, Add Mss 68882-9, letters to and from Frederick and Maude Verney and their children (in Part 2 here). Frederick Verney was the youngest son of Nightingales brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney. He and Maude, dearest Maude, shared her faith and politics. Over time both became working colleagues (both gave papers for her) and both were close to her in her old age. She was godmother of one of their daughters and wrote to and enjoyed letters from all the children.

It was to Maude Verney that Nightingale confided the circumstances of her religious conversion, some fifty years after it happened. (Nightingales call to service, 1837, is well known for she herself referred to it often enough, but the experience of conversion the year before has escaped the attention of scholars, including those specializing in her faith!) This set of letters also does much to show the very warm side of Nightingale, her fondness for children and her encouragement of a capable young woman to make the most of her life. The microfilm edition makes accessible this interesting material, in Part 1, which gives quite a different picture of Nightingale from that now popular among current biographers and commentators.

If Nightingales personal life is often written about badly, her massive work on India has scarcely been written on at all. The first full-length book on it appeared in 2004 and scholarly articles are rare and scant. Yet Nightingale worked professionally on India for more than 40 years. She instigated a royal commission on India and encouraged broad terms of reference for public health (a well-known fact). Her meetings with viceroys before they departed for their posts are also well known, but not the years of behind-the-scenes work prodding officials, badgering governors and viceroys, meeting with officials in London and increasingly with Indian nationals committed to reform. All this is clear in the original sources. Nightingales own change in tactics, from promoting reform top down to encouraging change in local areas and using local institutions is also evident in the original papers.


The Need for Primary Sources

Nightingale is nowadays typically quite misrepresented on womens issues. A BBC2 programme even likened her to Margaret Thatcher and stated that she opposed the vote for women. Yet the original sources show Nightingales strong support for Liberal politics--she really did not like Conservatives although she had to work with them. Rather she gave money to the Liberal Party, wrote letters of support for Liberal candidates and even thought God was a Liberal! So also is her support for the vote for women clear in correspondence.

Another example of differences between Nightingale as seen in actual sources and the Nightingale as depicted in the secondary literature concerns public health care. Nightingale is still treated as a nurse or even a military nurse, which only begins to describe what she actually did. Her pioneering work in bringing professional nursing into the workhouse infirmaries, a major step towards the achievement of a public health care system, has received little scholarly attention. This required careful political manoeuvring as well as nursing expertise, and is a fascinating story as it unfolds. The microfilm series includes correspondence with the key players in the reform (William Rathbone and Agnes Jones), as the first experiment took place, in Liverpool.

The microfilm series will also show a different Nightingale on issues of war and militarism. Yes, she joked about being the longest serving member of the War Office and she never lost her commitment to improving the quality of life of the ordinary soldier. But correspondence also shows her astute awareness of the dangers of militarism and abhorrence of war. There has been good publication, by Sue Goldie, on Nightingales Crimea work, but her enormous amount of work during the Franco-Prussian War has been ignored (Nightingale was given decorations by both sides). Her concern for civilians in that war, too, as Germany occupied her beloved France, add to the interesting complications, well worth the attention of scholars today.

While there are several other large collections of Nightingale letters (Claydon House, the Wellcome Trust and the London Metropolitan Archives notably) none has the breadth of the British Librarys collection. Claydon and the Wellcome (largely through its copies of Claydon material) have larger collections of family correspondence than the British Library, although the British Library has letters from a broader range of family members, and a sizable number overall, too. But no other archive covers the full range of Nightingales interests remotely as well as does the British Library: philosophy, politics, religion, public health, nursing, war, India, statistics and women.

The British Library collection is not only superb in range and the quality of its content but it is well cared for. The conservation standards of the library are exemplary, yet it also makes its collections accessible to the scholarly world far better than do most archives. It respects copyright laws and does not (unlike other culprits) purport to control publication of the materials it holds (the prerogative of the copyright holder). In the case of Nightingale the Henry Bonham Carter Will Trust holds copyright and, in the liberal spirit of its namesake, treats the collection in effect as public domain, granting permission readily to any scholar who wishes to publish from it.


Components of the Microfilm Series

Part 1 of the Adam Matthew Publications series covers the Crimea, India and public health reform, 22 reels of correspondence with such key actors as Sidney and Elizabeth Herbert, Lord Panmure; close friends, Crimea nurses, Queen Victoria and numerous royal personages (including letters on the Franco-Prussian War as well as the Crimean), key collaborators on public health reform and military nursing, nursing and other services for later wars (Egypt and South Africa), the viceroys of India, governors of India presidencies, experts and sanitary reformers of India.

Part 2 includes a substantial number of family letters and letters to such close friends as Benjamin Jowett, Harriet Martineau and J.S. Mill, covering thus very personal matters, philosophy and religious faith. Nightingales letters to J.S. Mill on womens rights and the vote are here, as is her critique of Jowetts Dialogues of Plato (she was a Plato scholar herself). Correspondence with presidents of the Poor Law Board on the changes needed in legislation to bring nursing into the workhouse infirmary also appear here.

Part 2 includes the general correspondence category, an under-utilized tool organized by year, with incoming letters from an astonishing range of people, sometimes with her replies. Anguished letters from young ladies wanting to become nurses (but Mama and Papa disagree) are juxtaposed with letters from such people as W.E. Gladstone, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Richard Monckton Milnes, her former suitor.

Part 3 takes us back to research and writing, to drafts of manuscripts from Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes and Introductory Notes on Lying-in Institutions, both pioneering studies. There is material on army medicine, including drafts for her royal commissions. Much of the India material is here. As well as this more technical material there are drafts of Nightingales writing on religion and philosophy, including the preparation of her three-volume Suggestions for Thought. There are diaries and notebooks (alas, not all, for others are mentioned which have disappeared). Much of the nursing material is here, including correspondence on the Nightingale Fund, which pioneered so much nursing reform. Nightingales correspondence with her cousin, Henry Bonham Carter, secretary of the Nightingale Fund Council for decades provides a handy paper trail on nursing issues and hospital reform work.

Part 4 covers correspondence with key nursing leaders over Nightingales whole lifetime, both at St Thomas Hospital, where the Nightingale School was based, and in hospitals throughout Britain and indeed in the world. Here we see how Nightingales influence spread through the work of women she advised and mentored. Correspondence with William Rathbone, the philanthropist who funded the first workhouse infirmary nursing, and with Agnes Jones, the superintendent of nursing who died on the job at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary, is here.


Scope for the Microfilm Series

This microfilm publication of such wide scope will facilitate research not only into Nightingales own contribution as a theorist, advocate and reformer, but on major colleagues with whom she worked. It permits a thorough examination of sources, including final printed copies, correspondence on and drafts of major texts. Thus it makes possible both a better understanding of Nightingales method and her use of a network of colleagues to effect change.

The results were spectacular: major reforms in public health care measures, especially for the sick poor, the neglected of her time as ours. The issues on which she was working are still issues today and the method she used to tackle them still makes sense.



  Highlights
Description
Contents
Editorial introduction
Digital Guide
 
 
 
 
 
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