Florence Nightingale

In 1854-56, during the Crimean War, she was in charge of nursing in the military hospitals at Scutari, in Turkey, where she coped with conditions of crowding, inadequate sanitation, and shortage of basic necessities. In 1860 she established in London the Nightingale School for Nurses, the first such in the world. The second daughter of William Edward Nightingale (originally Shore) and Frances (Fanny) Smith, Florence was named after her birthplace, where her well-to-do parents were temporarily …

…illness; her invalidism may have been partly neurotic and partly intentional. By this apparent stratagem she was able to devote herself night and day to the task at hand. Her sight gradually failed, until in 1901 she became completely blind. In 1907 the king conferred on her the Order of Merit--the first woman ever to receive it. Florence Nightingale died in 1910. The offer of a national funeral and burial in Westminster Abbey was, by her wish, declined.