A Small Band of Nurses
In the article on William Russell we saw how imaginative and vivid news reporting from the Front was bringing the whiff of powder to British breakfast tables for the first time. The Times also had a correspondent based in Constantinople, Thomas Chenery, who equally graphically reported the aftermath of the glory - the lamentable plight of the sick and wounded.
Chenery accurately and in detail described their nightmare journey across the Black Sea without treatment, packed like sardines into grossly overloaded ships. If they survived, they were admitted to the Scutari Barrack Hospital, the Selimieh Kishlar, or ex-Turkish Artillery barracks. It was constructed, and remains to this day, as a huge hollow square with high towers at each corner. It had originally been intended as a rest and recuperation centre for invalid soldiers evacuated after treatment, but had to serve as a first line hospital when the original Haidar Pasha General Hospital, half a mile to the south, became swamped with cholera cases during the first epidemic. Airless and appallingly unhygienic, being alive with rats, cockroaches, fleas and bugs of every description, the Barrack Hospital was totally inappropriate as a location for housing hospital cases. And it was in no way equipped to do so -Chenery emphasised in his articles that there was no nursing care to be had in the hospital - the many hundreds of sick and wounded were 'attended' by a few Chelsea pensioners who had been drafted as an ambulance corps on the outbreak of war, although, as he dryly wrote "Whether it was a scheme for saving money by utilizing the poor old men or shortening the duration of their lives and pensions, it is difficult to say, but they.....require nurses themselves rather than to be able to nurse others. At Gallipoli and Varna they died in numbers'. Those few that remained were 'so weak as to be unable to attend the most ordinary duties. The soldiers attend upon each other.'
Coming so hard on the rapturous acclaim for the bravery and steadfastness of the British soldier at the Alma, this news of how those who had made sacrifices were being rewarded caused enraged uproar amongst all classes in Britain. Russell, a Ph.D in righteous indignation, had added his voice to Chenery's, stressing how well in contrast the French cared for their wounded. 'Why have we no sisters of charity?' screamed a correspondent in 'The Times'.
When Florence Nightingale read this exposé, which appeared in 'The Times' over the period 9-13th October, she was still employed as Superintendent of the 'Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness' in Harley Street, where we left her in The Young Florence Nightingale Part 2.This article has been substantially revised and expanded concurrently with this present article. The previous fourteen months had flown past for her. With her by now characteristic mixture of passion and efficiency, she had targeted inefficient areas in the running of the hospital, cut costs and improved performance. She had had to fight hard against opposition on principle to her innovations from traditionalist doctors, caution and distrust from the ladies of the Charitable Committee, religious discrimination from everyone. She had learnt how to manipulate committees, and even practised actual nursing, in particular putting in a stint at Middlesex Hospital during the cholera epidemic of August 1854. Now a possible appointment as Superintendent of Nursing at Kings College Hospital was on the cards. But all that was forgotten when the news of what was happening at Scutari broke. And she heard again a voice in her mind coming from outside herself. This time she heard a direct instruction. She was to drop everything and go out to Scutari immediately.
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