Florence Nightingale's 200th anniversary & No Place for Ladies ~ Helen Rappaport

It was March 20th 2007 when I wrote about Helen Rappaport's first book, No Place For Ladies - The untold story of women in the Crimean War and here we are thirteen years later, Helen and I firm friends and how delighted I am that the book has been reprinted for the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. 

Not only do we have the Nightingale Hospitals, raised within days as our insurance against an NHS overwhelmed (beds thankfully not needed in quantity, but not yet decommissioned) but the arrival of Covid 19 has seen the nation pull together in many similar ways to the Victorians, though faced with a war on a different front. It would seem that the human instinct to support, to raise funds, to help and be useful, and to make things that will help those who are fighting on the front line remains undiminished by time, change and progress. Substitute scrubs for muffattees and there you have it.

And so in honour of the book's reincarnation I have dusted off that original post from the scribbles basement along with a comment that Helen left at the time. 50% of the royalties from any sales of the book will go to St Thomas's Hospital where the Nightingale nurse training school was established in 1860.

 

If a book can help me chip into a new seam of reading then it's worth its weight in gold and No Place For Ladies by Helen Rappaport has done exactly that. I've hit the mother-lode with this one and am now a mine of information on all things interesting about the Crimean War. I can bore the muffatees off anyone so here's a selection of my Crimean Cameos pronounced over kitchen table coffee at the weekend...

"Did you know that Queen Victoria asked Lord Rokeby to take a break from military duties and go out and pick her a nosegay of flowers in the Crimea and he did? It was sent back to England and is preserved at Windsor Castle to this very day"

"Do you know one nurse assisted at 56 amputations in 30 hours...or was it 30 in 56?"

"Do you know Prince Albert designed the Victoria Cross and they are all made from the metal of the guns?"
"Everyone knows that and they're running out"
"So where were the guns captured then?" Silence..."Ah see, Sebastopol"

"Do you know the soldiers dug up Crimean snowdrop bulbs and sent them home?"

I won't tell you anymore but rest assured there is plenty more in this extremely readable account of the role of the women at the Front and one that you desperately want to talk about afterwards, especially if like me you have a bit of a gap in your Crimean War knowledge

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Florence Nightingale was busy trying to keep order and discipline in the nursing world, Mary Seacole was out there as the hostess with the mostest providing food and supplies as well as her vast array of very effective alternative remedies.Wherever there was a need Mary Seacole seemed to be the one to anticipate and fulfill it, red tape was there to be ignored.

Meanwhile the army wives, who were allowed to travel in small numbers with each regiment, seemed to struggle to find a role for themselves beyond attempting to care for their husbands and living in utter squalor and poverty as it became clear the army could barely look after itself, let alone its women.
Whenever I lay hands on a book like this I turn first to the bibliography to see what else might be worth reading.Helen Rappaport's research is formidable and there is a wealth of other reading to choose from and one book in particular that you will certainly want to read It's the day to day events that are so fascinating and if it hadn't been for Mrs Fanny Duberley's diary I suspect a great deal of this would remain a mystery. Fanny was the army wife with a difference and her diary a superb primary source.

Helen left this comment on that post back in 2007...

'I'm so glad you enjoyed the book Lynne. For me as a social historian it was a joy digging out the small but forgotten anecdotes about the war - such as the knitting instructions for mittens published in the Patriotic Journal or seeing the nosegay of Crimean flowers so lovingly preserved in the queen's album at Windsor, or the descriptions of Queen Victoria's solicitous sending of false teeth and prosthetic limbs to the wounded whom she visited. There was one aspect of the war I never quite found a way of working into the story though - and that was one or two Crimean 'romances', including the racy story of an English officer's wife who disappeared one day and weeks later was spotted shacked up with a French officer over in the French camp. So many wonderful stories that give a much more rounded view of ordinary people enduring a totally senseless war that take the story beyond all the tedious military strategy and the fighting. I really didn't want to get to the end of it! And still feel bereft ... but then, I have about six great big fat files full of research on Mary Seacole .... there's a lot more to her story yet to be told.'

I know Helen is currently writing a book about the White Russian emigrées in Paris before and after the Russian revolution, but who knows perhaps one day we'll get her definitive biography of Mary Seacole. 

Meanwhile a casualty in the current situation has been the Florence Nightingale Museum, at St Thomas's Hospital in London, who were preparing to stage an exhibition to celebrate the bi-centenary and of course are now closed.  The exhibition can be viewed online and having had a browse I can confirm that a virtual visit will keep you nicely occupied for an afternoon. Then maybe add them to your list of places to be supported and visited once London reopens....it would be very sad indeed to lose some of these collections.