A genealogy

1788

Frances Smith ("Fanny"), FN's mother born. She is one of ten children born to an active liberal politician. The parents were Unitarians and fabulously wealthy. Frances said of her and her siblings that they never worked a day in their lives and just played and had fun. They all lived to be very old.

Frances "Fanny" Smith

Aunt Mai

W.E.N.

1794

WilliamEdwardShore ("W.E.N."), FN's father born. He assumed the name Nightingale to get his inheritance.

1798

Mary Shore, FN's aunt "Mai" (pronounced "my"), born. She marries Fanny's brother Mr. Samuel Smith. Their son, William Shore Smith (whom FN called "my boyShore"), was the heir, after his mother, to the entailed land at Embley and Lea Hurst, in default of a son to Mr. Nightingale.

1816

FN's mother falls in love with James Sinclair. He has no income except his pay as a captain in the army. It is 400 pounds a year and her father decides that would never do and refuses to approve of marriage. [About Victorian coinage.] By 1817 the affair was at an end.

1817

W.E.N. and Fanny engaged to be married.

1818

W.E.N. and Fanny married.

1818

Honeymoon in Europe.

1819

April 19, Frances Parthenope ("Pop") Nightingale, later Lady Verney, born in Naples, named after the old Greek settlement on the site of her birthplace.

Villa Colombaia

Derbyshire

1820

May 12, FN born in Florence (Firenze), Italy, in the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana.

Lea Hurst

The girls with W.E.N.

EmbleyPark

1821

The Nightingale family returns to England and tries to settle down in W.E.N.'s inherited property in Derbyshire. The Derby county property had an active lead smelter (1760-1935) which W.E.N. managed and owned. W.E.N. had a new house built for the family in the village of Lea and the the family lived there until 1823. The home was called Lea Hurst and served as a summer home to the Nightingales for the rest of FN's life.

1823

Family lives at Kynsham Court, Presteigne, in Herefordshire.

1825

The Nightingales move to a mansion named Embley Park in the parish of Wellow, in Hampshire. This is the site of FN's grave. This becomes the family's main home with Lea Hurst as a summer home.
W.E.N. begins to seriously educate the girls himself.

1837

February 7, God spoke to her at Embley; "God called her to His service" but she is not clear on how to "serve" Him.
September, the family travels to Europe while Embley is being remodeled. She meets Mary Clarke ("Clarkey") in Paris.

"There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain."

1839

April, the Family returns to England.
June, the girls, Flo and Parthe and two cousins from the Nicholson family are presented at Queen Victoria's birthday party.
September, the family takes up residence at Embley.

Florence and Parthenope

1840

Aunt Mai tries to arrange math lessons for Flo but Fanny resists. Ladies don't need math.

1842

FN meets Richard Monckton Milnes.

1844

FN asks Dr. Howe (husband of Julia Ward Howe, author of Battle Hymn of the Republic) at Lea Hurst if it would be ok to "devote herself to works of charity in hospitals and elsewhere as Catholic sisters do?"
Cousin Henry Nicholson proposes marriage, FN declines.

FN around 1845

1845

FN wants to work and train at Salisbury Infirmary nearby. Because of the reputation of nursing in that day, Mama and Parthe are horrified. A cultured lady of that day did not enter in hospital work.

"To be a good nurse one must be a good woman, or one is truly nothing but a tinkling bell."

1846

Lord Ashley tells her about the government reports called Blue Books. She starts to become a self-taught expert on hospitals and sanitation.

1847

Spring, Richard Monckton Milnes wants her to marry him. She is approaching a mental breakdown. Selina ("") and Charles Bracebridge take her to Rome with them. She meets Elizabeth ("Liz") and Sidney Herbert.

1848

FN attends the opening of Sidney Herbert's Charmouth convalescent home and her expertise is recognized.

"...Till a married woman can be in possession of her own property there can be no love or justice."

Richard Monckton Milnes

1849

After seven years of waiting, Milnes is given a final answer of no to his proposal of marriage. After much agonizing, she concludes that she could not have "work" of her own if she chooses to follow her heart into this society marriage. Marriage would destroy her chance of serving God's call.

1849

December, she accompanies the Bracebridges on a trip down the Nile in Egypt and Greece. She is near breakdown.

1850

After the trip up and down the Nile FN and the Bracebidges tour Europe. On July 31-August 13, she manages her first visit to the Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine. At the end of her visit Rev. Pastor Theodore Fliedner asks her to write a pamphlet on "The Institution of Kaiserwerth." She does so but declines credit for the pamphlet.

Kaiserswerth

"Moses was the greater man; for whereas Plato only formed a school, which formed the world, Moses went straight to work upon the world."

1851

From July 6-October 7 she is again at Kaiserswerth not as a guest but as a probationer (student). As a probationer she writes her Curriculum Vitae where she talks about her sickly childhood (something she shared with Milnes) and weak wrists. She never returns home to live.

1853

Her father gives her a yearly allowance of 500 pounds ($40-50,000 by today's standards).
FN writes "Cassandra"
March, God again spoke to FN and "asked me (FN) would I do good for him alone without the reputation." She decides to serve Him by serving the "sick poor."
FN went into residence in her first "situation" as superintendent of An Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness at no. 1 Upper Harley Street, from August 12, 1853 to October, 1854.

A view of Sebastopol from the sea

Hear Kenneth Landfrey blow the charge of the Light Brigade
Requires RealAudio.

Plan of the nurses' quarters

A "polar-area" diagram
More info.

1854

England, France and Sardinia come to the aid of Turkey against Russia: The Crimean War.
God speaks again to FN
October: through the first war correspondents, the public learns of needs of wounded soldiers. Sidney Herbert, as Secretary at War asks her to go nurse British soldiers. She assembles a party of 38 nurses and goes to Turkey to the BarrackHospital. This is her opportunity, her grand experiment, to show the value of female nurses in military hospitals. Assured of abundant supplies and splendid facilities, her nurses walk into horror. There is nothing. Doctors' resistance is broken down by the sheer enormity of the calamity. Flo emerges a heroine to the troops and public back home. She is the subject of songs and poems.

The BarrackHospital today

The graveyard near the Hospital

FN on her return from the Crimean

"You can arrest in some degree the course of the knave, but with the fool you don't know where you will find him next."

1855

FN becomes ill with Crimean Fever (brucellosis?)

1856

July, the war is over, the last patients and nurses leave. Florencegoes home to Lea Hurst. She is give many gifts and thank you letters for her service in the Crimean.
Upon request she visits Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to talk about her war experiences. They agree upon a need to correct wrongs.

1857

May, the government issues a warrant to establish a "Royal Commission" to investigate the disasters of the Crimean War. This was a kind of independent, high-level committee appointed to look into a problem and recommend changes. Women are not allowed to be on the commission or testify so because she alone knows all, she writes and compiles facts about the war and sends it all to the commission.

The Sepoy Rebellion in India calls her attention to sanitation problems in India and she begins a life-long project to sanitize the country.
This is the beginning of her illness, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After this period (of collecting facts for the commission) she is reclusive, mostly bed ridden and only sees people by appointment, one at a time. After her return from the Crimean War she never made a public appearance, never attended a public function, never issued a public statement.
To help her "sell" her ideas she invents graphs (the "polar-area" diagram), charts and tables which she uses in her notes on the Army and Hospitals. This had never been done before and is common practice now.
Sir Harry Verney proposes to FN but she declines. He then proposes to Parthenope, who accepts, and they announce their engagement in April.

1858

Sir Harry Verney and Parthenope are married at EmbleyPark in June. They move to Claydon House, where FN is a frequent guest.
W.E.N. increases her allowance to include all her bills for food and lodging and to allow her 500 pounds besides.

The Badge of the NightingaleTraining School

"Never allow a patient to be waked, intentionally, is the sine qua non of all good nursing."

1859

She publishes a small booklet titled "Notes on Nursing." It is very popular. It is expanded and published again in 1860 and in 1861 with special section on taking care of babies. This book sold millions all over the world: the only "wage" she ever earned in her life was her royalties from this book.

The lantern (or "lamp") of the period

1860

June 24, The Nightingale Training School for nurses opens at St. Thomas Infirmary with Mrs. Wardroper as its head. FN pays very close attention to every detail from her flat in London. The school is a success. Florence almost single-handedly invents modern nursing as we know it today, and creates a new image of female nurses as a professional class.

1861

August 2, Sidney Herbert dies.
God speaks for the fourth and last time to FN.
Army officials in America ask her advice on care of sick and wounded in the U.S. Civil War. She sends information to the Secretary of War and Dorothea Dix, Superintendent of Nurses for Union forces. When it looks as though England may get involved she helps the English get ready. By Christmas she is becomes very ill and it is feared she will die. She could not walk and for the next six years had to be carried from room to room. She continues to work.

1862

She publishes her Observations concerning sanitation problems in Inda.

1864

She works on setting up home nursing system, hospital for birth, barracks for married soldiers, hospitals for the insane and poor, helps to stop practice of putting all sick poor together: men, women, children, insane and sane.

1865

October, FN moves to No. 35 South Street, London, later to be known as No. 10 South Street, where she lives for the rest of her life.

1867

She works on rural hygiene, deaths in childbirth, and Indian sanitary questions. She collapses again. She finds it difficult to concentrate.

1871

She publishes Notes on Lying In Hospitals.

1872

Red Cross founder Henri Dunant claims Nightingale's work influenced his ideas.
Her parents have trouble coping with their two houses.
From now through 1879 she employs a secretary.
On July 18, Bracebridge dies.

1874

January, her father dies.

1880

February, her mother dies.

1883

Sister Parthe is seriously ill with arthritis; FN takes charge.

1887

British Nurses' Association organized.

1890

Parthenope dies.
The Edison company records her voice on a cylinder in her house on South St. It is restored and issued in 1939.

1896

FN confined to her bedroom — this time, permanently.

1902

FN can no longer read or write except with great difficulty.
She accepts the services of a companion/housekeeper/secretary. This is constant for the rest of her life.

1907

November, King Edward VII bestows the Order of Merit on FN; it is the first time that the Order is given to a woman.

1910

From Cecil Woodham Smith: "After February, 1910 she no longer spoke.
The end came on August 13, 1910. She fell asleep about noon and did not wake again.
Burial in Westminster Abbey was declined. She was buried in the family grave at East Wellow, and her coffin was carried by six sergeants of the British Army. Her only memorial is a line on the family tombstone "F. N. Born 1820. Died 1910.' She had lived for ninety years and three months."