Florence Nightingale 		August 13
Nurse
Florence Nightingale’s parents were temporarily resident in Florence when their second daughter as born in 1820, so they named her after the city. Florence spent most of her childhood in England, where her well-to-do parents had several houses. She was taught largely by her father, who instructed her in a variety of subjects and several languages. She disliked social life, but her interest in caring for the sick hardly provided a viable option for work for someone of her social position. At 17 she felt called by God to serve in some way, but it was not until 1846 that nursing became her mission in life.
She became acquainted with the nursing work of the Lutheran Deaconess Institution at Kaiserswerth and of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Paris. Through her reading she became widely regarded as an expert on public health and hospitals. In 1850 she went to Kaiserswerth to be trained as a nurse, and in 1853, in a complete break with her social background, became superintendent of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen, in London. Her very successful management led to invitations to advise other institutions.
The first reports of the Crimean War to reach London painted a grim picture, and women were urged to serve as the French Sisters of Mercy did. Florence Nightingale volunteered, and with a group of nurses was put in charge of nursing at the military hospital at Scutari in Turkey. The conditions were appalling, with overcrowding, lack of sanitation, infectious vermin, and not even basic nursing necessities. Florence even had to battle the authorities and the army doctors to improve conditions. She used her own money and other money brought from England to provide supplies to the hospital, and won the deep gratitude of the soldiers she nursed. It was for her evening visits to the wards that she became known as the “Lady with the Lamp”.
At the end of the war she shunned all efforts to fête her as a national hero, and took up the cause of health and welfare in the army in general. She provided extensive and damning evidence on conditions in the army to a Royal Commission in 1857, and then became expert on the conditions facing the British army in India. In 1860 she used the £45,000 subscribed by the public to the Nightingale Fund to establish the Nightingale School for Nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, the first nursing school of its kind in the world. Her expertise was called upon in the American Civil War and during the Franco-Prussian War.
From 1857 Florence lived as an invalid, mainly in London. She received numerous visitors and conducted a voluminous correspondence, and relentlessly drove her friends to obtain the things she needed to further her causes. The nature of her illness is unclear, but she used her situation to devote herself to her work single-mindedly. Her sight gradually failed, and by 1901 she was blind. In 1907 she was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit. She died in 1910.
For Liturgical Use
Florence Nightingale was born in 1820. Dissatisfied with her comfortable life, she felt called by God to devote her life to nursing. She gained what little training was then available. She offered her services to the British army on the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, and was sent to the military hospital at Scutari in Turkey. Her selfless devotion to her task won her the acclaim of her patients and recognition for social service by women. By the time she died in 1910, nursing had become a valued and honoured profession.
Sentence
You have caused your marvellous acts to be remembered; you Lord are gracious and full of compassion.		Psalm 111:4
Collects
God of compassion and healing,
you called Florence Nightingale to devote her life
to nursing the sick and wounded;
strengthen us to reveal your caring love 
through every tender act,
for the building of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
You are glorified, healing Saviour,
in your servant Florence
and in the women and men
who have devoted themselves to nursing;
may the lamp she lit
to bring help and comfort to sufferers
be held high by her successors.
Psalms	72:1-4,12-20	146
Readings
Isaiah 58:6-9		Compassion and health
James 1:22-27		Doers of the word
Luke 10:25-37		Compassion
Post Communion Sentence
Jesus said, “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, will not lose their reward.”		Matthew 10:42 (adapted)