Florence Nightingale and the Salisbury Incident

Abstract

Florence Nightingale's astute handling of mismanagement in Free Gifts Stores during the Crimean War underscored her administrative ability. Miss Nightingale went to Scutari ostensibly to nurse the British soldiers, and while there encountered innumerable instances of administrative and managerial ineffectiveness and difficulties. Among these were the problems in the accountability and deployment of supplies as well as the assignment and supervision of female personnel-an untried situation. The article identifies the misdirected organizational management which occasioned the introduction of women into British war nursing and the voluntary participation of the British citizenry in providing supplies and comfort for the Army. Through analysis of Miss Nightingale's and others' private correspondence, the problems of personnel management and supply distribution are brought into sharp focus. The interplay of policies and principles to which Miss Nightingale subscribed, the human frailty of one of her women, Miss Nightingale's illness, and the confusion and stress which characterized the Crimean War are discussed. The compassion, understanding, and rectitude as well as the human values to which Miss Nightingale subscribed in protecting a woman guilty of a breach of trust and felony and the troublesome slanderous attack to which Miss Nightingale was subjected at the instigation of her foes on the home front provide a background for the presentation of the Salisbury affair as an interesting aspect of historical research into the life of the Victorian heroine.