Almost every schoolchild has learned about Florence Nightingale – also known as the lady with the lamp – and how she travelled to a war zone nearly 3,200km (2,000 miles) away to nurse sick soldiers, at a time when women didn’t have the vote and were discouraged from working.
Located within St Thomas’ hospital in Waterloo, this museum offers an insight into the conditions nurses had to deal with before anaesthesia, and explores Nightingale’s life and legacy. The museum is small, but packed with information, which includes a ‘talk’ given by Nightingale herself.
The museum reveals how Nightingale was often disliked by her peers, but hugely admired by the men she tended. Other exhibits focus on nursing history – for example, there is a section on nursing during the Spanish Flu pandemic that struck the world just as the First World War ended in 1918. It demonstrates the work nurses did, and even has beds set up to show what hospital wards would have looked like at the time.
When is the Florence Nightingale Museum Open?
Daily 10am–5pm
Nearest Station
Waterloo Tube & Overland.
Listing generously provided by Eleanor Ross, author of London’s Museums and Galleries, Exploring the Best of the City’s Art and Culture (published by Frances Lincoln), which can be purchased online here.
