The Lea-Hurst Estate that Florence Nightingale lived as a child. Courtesy of the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, 2023.
Florence Nightingale: Her Reforms to Nursing, Military Medicine, and Preventitive Medicine
Early Life
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12th, 1820, in Florence, Italy. Her parents, William and Frances Nightingale, were two upper-class Victorians at the time, as her father worked as a banker and landowner while her mother was a housewife. Nightingale had an older sister named Frances, who was often referred to by her middle name, Parenthenope. Nightingale grew up in Hampshire and Derbyshire, England.
Childhood Sickness and Education
"I had a sickly childhood. The climate of England did not suit me, after that of Italy (Florence) where I was born. I could never play with the other children. "
-Florence Nightingale's curriculum vitae for the Deaconess Institution of 1851.
Nightingale was very ill as a child and was usually not able to play with children her age. It wasn't until she was eleven or twelve that she was able to write in cursive, which, at the time, was taught at age eight or nine. Nightingale reportedly had a strict governess as a child, but was mainly taught by her father, who would teach her Latin, Greek, and mathematics, such as statistics. She also had an interest in music, but was too sick to be able to sing properly.
"When I was ten my mother would have no more governesses and my father took us himself in hand. He taught me Latin and Greek and mathetmatics and whatever he knew himself...I had also the strongest taste for music. But God was mericiful to me, and took away my voice by constant sore throat."
-Florence Nightingale's curriculum vitae for the Deaconess Institution of 1851.
Early Nursing Interests and Victorian Society
"But my first idea I can recollect when I was a child was a desire to nurse the sick. My daydreams were all of hospitals and I visited them whenever I could. I never communicated it to anyone, it would have been laughed at, but I thought God had called me to serve Him in that way."
-Florence Nightingale's curriculum vitae for the Deaconess Institution of 1851.
Nightingale’s interest in medicine started at a young age, and she wished that she could nurse the sick. Despite this dream, she would not tell her parents until she was older, due to the fear of being laughed at. Nightingale, as a teenager, would be introduced to English society, despite her many rejections and how she did not see a reason to be tied to someone for marriage. Her mother was not supportive of this behavior and disliked the idea of Nightingale becoming a nurse. Nightingale would still try to become a nurse at nearby English hospitals, and succeed at one hospital where she worked until 1854.
During Florence Nightingale’s life, she never got married, even though her parents disapproved, and she continued to focus on her career and work instead of following traditional values.
"Nightingale saw that English spinsters like her aunts Patty and Ju were all too often poor, dependent, and despised, but she felt that marriage was jumping out of a frying pan into the fire. She remained unconvinced that her financial and social situation would improve if she married."
-Gill, Gillian, Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale, 2005.