NIGHTINGALE (FLORENCE)

Series of fifteen letters to her good friend Jessie Lennox, one of the original Nightingale Nurses, Claydon House and 10 South Street, Park Lane, W., 9 September 1883 to 7 June 1896 (15)

Footnotes

'THE MAN-COMMITTEE DOES NOT SEEM TO THINK A WOMAN HAS ANY BUSINESS IN THE BARRACK HUTS AT ALL': Florence Nightingale 'the mother of modern nursing' on pastoral care, difficulties with male committees and the role of the district nurse.

Florence Nightingale is widely acknowledged as 'The Mother of Modern Nursing' and here she writes to one of her acolytes, Jessie Lennox, in a long correspondence discussing the ideal role of the matron she wishes to appoint to take over the care of some 500 poor boys in an "industrial boys home". The matron, she writes, should embody the practicalities of a trained nurse with a mother's care for her charges, with an emphasis on good diet, warm clothing and good shoes. She cites the story of Ella Pirrie, the Lady Superintendent of the Union Infirmary, Belfast, who persuaded a child struck dumb to speak by adopting this more gentle approach when harsher means had failed. She asks Lennox's advice in drawing up a set of requirements to put forward in the clearest possible terms to the "man committee" as she puts it. Her frustration with such committees is evident, even for an influential person such as herself, but she recognises the enormous progress that has already been made in changing the status of nursing into a highly trained respectable profession. She goes on to speak of the role of the district nurse in the community ("...if the nurse has really that influence which she ought to have in the Patient's family, do they not become ashamed of letting her see the man or the woman drunk again? And does not that exercise a reforming influence?..."). Also included in the lot is a facsimile letter dated May 1900 addressed to all her nurses ("My dear children") in which she recognises her role as the Mother of Nursing ("...You have called me your mother-chief, it is an honour to me & a great honour, to call you my children..."), speaking too of advances in medicine and the professionalisation of nursing but ending, however, with a swipe at the suffragists ("...Woman was the home drudge. Now she is the teacher. Let her not forfeit it by being the arrogant – the "Equal with men"...").

The recipient of our letters, Jessie Lennox (1830-1933), was one of the original 'Nightingale Nurses' who trained at the Florence Nightingale School at St. Thomas's Hospital, London in the 1860's. According to her obituary in the British Journal of Nursing of February 1933 she also had the distinction of being a personal friend of David Livingstone, whom she met in Africa whilst working as a missionary and maid to Anna Mackenzie, who accompanied Mary Livingstone when she was reunited with her husband at the Zambezi in 1862. After her nursing training she was one of the first six Army Sisters appointed by the War Office to the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley, and held the post of matron of the Sick Children's Hospital in Belfast for eighteen years. Her papers are held at the Florence Nightingale Museum. According to Lynn Macdonald, some 29 letters from Lennox to Florence Nightingale are extant (ed. Lynn Macdonald, Extending Nursing: Florence Nightingale Collected Works, 2009) but only a few from the other side of the correspondence are in the public domain. Photographs of her are also held at the Livingstone Family Trust.

According to a letter from Jessie Lennox included in the lot, one letter from the series appears to have been sent by her to Dr Lilias Maclay (b.1893) in 1917, seven years after the death of Florence Nightingale: "...her body is at rest but her work is still very much with us..." she writes in a distinctive hand. Maclay's father was Lord Maclay of Duchal House, Kilmacolm, the founder of the Maclay-Macintyre shipping firm. She had enrolled at Glasgow University to study for a medical degree in 1912, passing the course with first class certificates in clinical surgery. During the First War she served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt and is one of the few females featured in the University's Roll of Honour (see www.universitystory.gl.ac.uk). After her marriage to John Edmund Hamilton in 1926 she practised as a doctor in Glasgow and Edinburgh. A great supporter of equal rights for women, she was the President of the YWCA of Great Britain and was Vice-President of Women's Voluntary Services as well as being an active member of the Women's Suffrage Society.

The remainder of the letters were bequeathed to Dr Maclay after Lennox's death in 1933 as a solicitor's letter with the lot confirms (The Hon. Mrs J. E. Hamilton being her married name). Lilas' son Patrick (1934-1988) followed his mother into the medical profession, as did her granddaughter, the present owner of the letters. The correspondence has remained in the family until now.