Florence Nightingale was born in 1820. She came from an upper class family that saw her future getting married and raising children.

After two successful years in the Crimea, Florence returned to Britain with a mission.  She appealed to the Queen, sent an 800 page report to the government and wrote a book, “Notes on Nursing” which explained all her methods.  This became the standard textbook for generations.  By 1860, it was a best seller!  Florence had raised £44,000 and she used this money to set up the Nightingale School of Nursing, in St. Thomas’s Hospital, London.  Discipline, order and attention to detail were prime factors in her teaching.  She also wanted nurses to remain single so that they wouldn’t have divided loyalties.  She had turned down many offers of marriage.  Of the 38 nurses she had taken to the Crimea, 24 were nuns, this was partly due to the fact that there was higher standard of training in convents but also a personal belief that nursing was a religious vocation.  This paved the way for a greater respect for nurses, who were commonly thought of as dirty and purposeless, along with the self-belief from nurses that their job had no importance and that they were simply carrying out menial chores.  Nurses were soon to be thought of as highly educated people with important responsibilities.

Later in life she received many honours and in 1907 was awarded the British Order of Merit.  She died in London, 1910 and in 1915 the Crimean Monument was built in Waterloo Place in honour of her success.  Her work was the main reason for the Registration of Nurses Act in 1919 that made training compulsory for nurses, which showed that the GOVERNMENT was taking the nursing profession more seriously.  Her work concerning midwives also paved the way for the Midwives Act, which set standards for midwifery and also made training compulsory.