Women of Bloomsbury: Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale earned the nickname “The Lady of the Lamp” from her time leading a team of nurses during the Crimean War in the 1850s, where she'd do her nightly rounds comforting wounded soldiers with a lamp in hand. She was also a statistician, inventing the “polar area diagram” - a precursor to the modern pie chart - to illustrate the causes of soldier mortality and advocate for healthcare reforms.

Away from the battlefield she established the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas' Hospital in London and wrote “Notes on Nursing”, and although she meant the book “simply to give hints for thought to women who have personal charge of the health of others” it's remarkably relevant today with its holistic approach to causes and treatment of disease.

Before Florence Nightingale, nurses were typically ill-trained and poorly disciplined, with the exception of some nuns. Florence did a huge amount to improve the respectability of nurses and encourage more educated women like herself into the profession.

Florence has left her mark on a few places in the local area. Following a quarrel over whether it was proper for a woman who was not a lady to tend to a lady, she became Superintendent at the wonderfully named The Institution for the care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances at Chandos St a few minutes walk to the east (although the hospital moved shortly afterwards to Harley Street). The hospital provided treatment for “educated women” who were too poor to afford private medical care. It cost £1.05 per week for a single room, about £150 in today's money. She was also involved in the Paddington Home, a residence and training center for district nurses on Bloomsbury square just a few minutes south east.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has 23 names written above the entrances, they are all men. Despite everything she did for nursing, Florence Nightingale was excluded due to “the length of her name”.