Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses.
Nightingale’s Colleague
[Nightingale, Florence]. (Taylor, Frances Margaret). Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses. The narrative of twelve months’ experience in the hospitals of Koulali and Scutari. By a Lady Volunteer. In two volumes. London: Hurst and Blackett…, 1856.
Two vols.; 8vo.; frontispiece illustrations with tissue guards; preliminaries foxed; bright yellow endpapers; brown cloth; decoratively stamped in gilt and blind; edgeworn. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition, by one of Florence Nightingale’s Scutari volunteers to Koulali, of these scarce volumes (Bishop & Goldie, A Bio Bibliography of Florence Nightingale, p. 136); with frontispieces of the General Hospital in Koulali in Volume I, and the lower stable ward in the barrack hospital at Koulali, in Volume II.
The Preface explains that while there has been a deep interest in news from the Crimean front, little was known about the behind-the-scenes aid that the nurses provided:
For this reason, one of the band of Englishwomen who went out, and assisted in alleviating the sufferings of the sick and wounded soldiers, ventures to lay before her countrymen some account for the sufferings and the uncomplaining patience of those brave men, and also the gradual improvements that were subsequently made in the hospitals.
Each volume has fifteen chapters, which detail the life of an English nurse in Eastern hospitals, from battlefront experiences during the Crimean war and conditions in the hospitals; to supply and demand of nurses; descriptions of the cities and towns where the nurses were stationed; descriptions of the nursing staff; relations with soldiers; and Florence Nightingale’s involvement.
Taylor discusses Nightingale’s “diet kitchen” at the hospital in Scutari; and then describes her night rounds:
Two days after my arrival, Miss Nightingale sent for me to go with her round the hospital (Miss Nightingale generally visited her special cases at night). We went round the whole of the second story, into many of the wards and into one of the upper corridors. It seemed an endless walk, and it was one not easily forgotten. As we slowly passed along, the silence was profound; very seldom did a moan or a cry from those multitudes of deeply suffering ones fall on our ears. A dim light burnt here and there. Miss Nightingale carried her lantern, which she would set down before she bent over any of the patients. I much admired Miss Nightingale’s manner to the men – it was so tender and kind. (pp. 69-70)
Taylor (1832-1900) was the last child born to an Anglican clergyman, and she was home schooled; when she was sixteen she entered Priscilla Seddon’s Anglican sisterhood, and also did charity work. In 1854, she volunteered to treat British soldiers wounded in the Crimean War, which led to her being sent to the front, to Scutari, where Nightingale requested volunteers to move on to Koulali. Taylor accepted. (Scandal, unfortunately, broke out in the latter city, whereby the nurses were charged with misconduct; they were dismissed from their service and sent back to Britain.)
At home, Taylor was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and continued with her charitable work; it was during this time that she wrote Eastern Hospitals. She was one of three Eastern hospital nurses in the to pen a memoir about their working with Nightingale: “Miss Fanny Taylor, was a lady, one Miss Elizabeth Davies, a nurse, and the third, Sister Mary Aloysius (Doyle), a nun, [so] we get three different points of view.” (Florence Nightingale, 1820-1859, by I.B. O’Malley, p. 242). She also wrote Tyborne and Who Went Thither (1857), about Elizabethan-era Catholic martyrs, and edited two Catholic periodicals: The Lamp, which was distributed to lower and middle classes, and The Month.
She began living in a Polish congregation called the Little Servants of the Mother of God, and took vows there in 1872, christened Mother Magdalen. She later started
Print Inquire