A Service to Celebrate the Life of Florence Nightingale in the Centennial Year of her Death
12 May 2010 at 6:15 pm
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, preached at this year’s Service to Commemorate the Life and Work of Florence Nightingale at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday 12 May 2010 at 6.15pm.
This Service also celebrates the professions of nursing and midwifery and all staff, both qualified and unqualified working in these services, are invited to attend.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Florence Nightingale in 1910. She was born on 12 May 1820, and named after the Italian city of her birth.
In 1851, she went to Kaiserwerth in Germany for three months nursing training. This enabled her to become superintendent of a hospital for gentlewomen in Harley Street, in 1853. The following year, the Crimean War began and soon reports in the newspapers were describing the desperate lack of proper medical facilities for wounded British soldiers at the front. Sidney Herbert, the war minister, already knew Nightingale, and asked her to oversee a team of nurses in the military hospitals in Turkey. In November 1854, she arrived in Scutari in Turkey. With her nurses, she greatly improved the conditions and substantially reduced the mortality rate
She returned to England in 1856. In 1860, she established the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Once the nurses were trained, they were sent to hospitals all over Britain, where they introduced the ideas they had learned, and established nursing training on the Nightingale model. During the Abbey service, the Procession of the Lamp takes place. The Lamp will be carried by a Scholar of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and this year it will be escorted by student nurses from the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and student nurses from the Armed Forces.
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