NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE. 1820-1910.


Autograph Letter Signed ("F. Nightingale") to an unnamed recipient, but possibly Lady Louisa Ashburton, recommending potential nurses, 1 p, 4to, 30 Old Burlington St, [London,] Wednesday, [c.1857,] minor soiling, folds.AN IMPORTANT LETTER ABOUT COORDINATING CARE AND REFERENCING HER EXPERIENCE IN THE CRIMEAN WAR, from "...the greatest figure in the history of nursing" (ODNB 40, pp 904-912). Nightingale here writes of a Mrs. [Susan] Cator, "From her real goodness & respectability I used to employ her in the Crimean work to sit up with the sick officers, a task I would only share with the most trustworthy. But, if you take her, I should like to tell her myself that she must be obedient." There are three similar letters at the National Library of Scotland written to Louisa Ashburton in 1857, that reference the same set of nurses (Cator, Montague, and Robbins), but in a later setting. One begins "Cator, the nurse I so highly recommended to you, has long been placed in a very good situation, which I do not think her likely to leave." See Grolier Medicine 71. Accompanied by a steel engraved portrait (1872).