Who was Florence Nightingale?

Widely regarded as the founder of modern nursing, Nightingale ‘mesmerised’ the world, according to Anne Marie Rafferty, Professor of Nursing Policy at King’s and expert on Florence Nightingale.

Florence Nightingale in 1886 with a group of Nightingale nurses and her brother-in-law Sir Harry Verney.

‘The Lady of the Lamp’

Nightingale's reputation as the 'Lady of the Lamp' derived from her experience directing patient care during the Crimean War. Her experiences there convinced her of the need to take a sanitarian approach to hospital design, as overcrowding, poor ventilation and bad drains had actually encouraged the spread of disease. She publicized the miasma theory of disease, while advocating light and airy hospitals with clean staff and good sanitary engineering. Engraving by Greatbach after J. Hind.

 Nightingale returned to England in 1856 to an outpouring of public generosity. The fund, amounting to millions of pounds in today's money, enabled her to establish a nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in 1860.

The world’s first professional school of nursing, this would be the direct forebear of King’s modern Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery.

Professor Rafferty explained: "The world was mesmerised by the heroine of the Crimea not just because of her prodigious gifts, gritty determination and relentless focus on her goal, but also because of how she communicated her sense of authority to her audience."

Charity records and pie-charts

Professor Rafferty further describes how "at the age of 70 she became one of the first people to produce a 'charity record' – a recording of her voice on Thomas Edison’s sound machine – to support the fund for destitute veterans of the Crimea’s Charge of the Light Brigade."

Nightingale also had a great gift for drawing forth drama from data, recognising that every picture tells a story. She was constantly innovative in the way she presented her arguments visually, and is credited with developing a form of pie-chart now known as the polar area diagram.