Women
Florence Nightingale Does the Math*
Florence Nightingale is best known for her heroic efforts in the Crimean War,** where she threw open windows, scrubbed filthy floors and equally filthy men,*** bullied doctors and officers on the spot, fought with the British Army’s military director, and saved lives. She returned home a heroine. Victorian Britain loved to celebrate a celebrity. Nightingale…
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In Celebration of Nurses
I’ve spent a lot of the last ten months thinking, reading, writing and talking about nurses.* In the months since Heroines of Mercy Street was published, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to nurses–and their friends, mothers, daughters, granddaughters and nieces. (I’m sure nurses also have fathers, sons, grandsons and nephews, but the men…
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Shin-Kickers From History: Constance Gore-Booth Markiewicz
On Easter Monday, April 24 , 1916, a group of Irish nationalists proclaimed the establishment of an Irish Republic and rose up in rebellion against British rule in Ireland. Among them was Countess Constance Gore-Booth Markiewicz–revolutionary, politician, suffragette and social activist. Constance Gore-Booth was born in 1868 to a wealthy family of Angle-Irish Protestants, part…
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