Florence Nightingale (1820 -1910)

Florence Nightingale, pioneer of nursing and health care reform, has strong links with Hampshire. Her family home was located near Romsey, she made regular trips back to Hampshire after the Crimean War and she is buried at St Margaret’s Church, East Wellow in the Test Valley.

Florence helped influence the siting of the Royal County Hospital in Winchester and was keen to be involved in the design of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley near Southampton, which became a training centre for the new Nursing Service and the largest military hospital of its time.

© Copyright Hampshire County Council 2011.

The Lady with the Lamp

During the Crimean campaign, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp", deriving from a phrase in a report in The Times:

She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.

The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":

 Lo! in that hour of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.