Last night I tuned in to Radio 3’s Nightwaves midway through an item about the new Florence Nightingale museum. It was good to hear the discussants express the hope that all Nightingale's work on statistics & public health will become better known & that she might become a role model for girls interested in mathematics as well as nursing.
As I listened I realised that one of the reasons for the difficulties about her reputation is that she was, quintessentially, That Woman, a focus for all our ambiguity about females with power.
Florence Nightingale has always been a hero of mine, partly because she featured in every Book of Heroines for Girls when I was a child, but even more importantly because she was also a Derbyshire girl.
Her family home at Lea Hurst was quite a regular destination for one of our Sunday outings, especially in spring when the grounds put on a wonderful display of daffodils.
The crossroads near Lea Hurst also provided the meeting point for the first midnight hike I was allowed to go on, at the age of 14. Such hikes were a popular pursuit, involving both Girl Guide Rangers & Boy Scout Rovers. It seems strange now that children as young as 14 were allowed to join in, but for our parents, or even older siblings, 14 had been the normal school leaving age (at the end of only an elementary education) for the vast majority until the 1944 Education Act changed things. But 14 still remained the beginning of adulthood in many activities.
I cannot remember whether I caught the last bus to the meeting point or whether my father dropped me off, but what seems even more strange to modern sensibilities was that I was just left to wait on the grass verge until company arrived. I sat with my back to the wall, which I had to get up & peer over occasionally to reassure myself that it really was just resting cows, not strange men, indulging in heavy breathing & coughing on the other side.
The hike was probably about 6 miles. We then spent the rest of the night in our sleeping bags on the floor of what I guess was a village school – at least it had a well-equipped kitchen where we were able to cook a breakfast of tinned beans, tomatoes, bacon & toast before making our various ways home.
I learned more when I was able to read the biography by Cecil Woodham-Smith, by which time I counted myself a statistician, & felt both delight & outrage that I had known little or nothing about this aspect of her life.
Matthew Sweet considered it a ‘top fact’ that Nightingale invented the pie chart. In the interests of balance it should be said that this claim has been disputed, but even if earlier examples can be found, there is no evidence that she was aware of them. She also corresponded with Quetelet, & it was Sir Edward Cook’s biography of her which first alerted me to the most probable origins of that damned lie about statistics.
She also kept up her campaigns despite being in great pain, confined to her couch.
Really, instead of wasting time arguing about the claims of Florence Nightingale or Mary Seacole, feminists everywhere should recognise the strengths of both.
