FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

[LORD] MARK BONHAM CARTER

EUGENE BODICHON [Husband of Barbara Leigh Smith]

MARAGRET SMYTHE [Granddaughter of Sir Thomas Crawford]

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

THE MORNING POST AUGUST 15 1910

DEATH OF MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA

We regret to state that Miss Florence Nightingale the heroine of the Crimean War Nursing Service, died somewhat unexpectedly on Saturday afternoon at her residence, 10 South Street, Park Lane. The cause of death was heart failure. Two members of her family were present at the end. Miss Nightingale who was in her ninety-first year, had been under the constant supervision of her own doctor, Sir Thomas Barlow. The funeral will take place in the course of the next few days and will be of the quietest possible character in accordance with her strongly expressed wish.

 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The time was when the name of Florence Nightingale was on the lips of everyone; when she was regarded as an all but angelic presence, and when her name was almost magical in its effect on the well-being of the British soldier, especially when invaded and in hospital. Even of late years, when so many of her English sisters have followed her example of heroic self-devotion, she was always regarded as one of those personages of whom our country might well be proud. Whenever she broke the silence of the retirement imposed on her by years and by failing health her words were regarded as words of wisdom, to be cherished and obeyed.

MISS NIGHTINGALE'S EARLY HOME

In the midst of the lovely scenery of North Derbyshire, not very far from Matlock and Ashbourne, stands a fine mansion in a pleasant and well-wooded park, called Lea Hurst. This was one of the two seats of Miss Nightingale's father, the late Mr. William Shore Nightingale, his other residence being Embley Park, near Romsey, Hampshire. Her father's original name was Shore, and he came of an old and respected Yorkshire family, but he took the name of Nightingale on succeeding to the property and estates of a distant relative. Early in life he married a daughter of the late Mr William Smith MP for Norwich, who was an ardent labourer along with Clarkson and Wilberforce in the cause of slave emancipation and a general supporter and promoter of benevolent works. Lea Hurst was the home of Miss Nightingale's childhood, but she was born at Florence on May 12 1820, and derived her Christian name from the city of her birth.

Brought up in a home where wealth was joined with culture and refinement, her education was carefully conducted under the eyes of her parents. In addition to French and the ordinary accomplishments of young ladies of the time of George IV., she learned as a child the German and Italian languages, and under her father's tuition she became proficient in classical and mathematical studies and in literature and science. She became even in her girlhood a great traveller, and that at a time when travelling was not the easy luxury that it has now become, for there were few railways then in England and none to speak of on the Continent. Still, se visited most of the chief cities of Europe, and extended her travels as far as Egypt, thus gaining a wider knowledge of the world than fell to the lot of most English girls. Being of a strongly practical and philanthropic disposition, Miss Nightingale, after putting in exercise such opportunities of charitable works as she found in the neighbourhood of her home, and having spent mush time in studying the plan of work in many schools and institutions here, resolved to take up her residence in the vicinity of Kaiserwerth, on the Rhine, where some Protestant Sisters of Mercy had a hospital. The knowledge which she gained at Kaiserwerth was practically turned to use by her on her return to England by assisting in the improvement and reorganisation of Governess` Home in Harley-street, which she liberally assisted with her purse. She had already spent three months in one of the German hospitals, besides Kaiserwerth, for the care of the sick and infirm.

WORK IN THE CRIMEA

The Crimean War broke out in the summer of 1854, and when, after the Battles of the Alma, Inkerman, and Balaclava, the hospital system then in existence had been proved to be a failure, Miss Nightingale offered her services in aid. It was Lady Mary Forester who first drew public attention to the great need which existed of a better system and of the help of educated and refined women to direct the work of nursing the sick and wounded soldiers. Mr Sidney Herbert, then Secretary for War, at once gave effect for the idea, and engaged Miss Nightingale to undertake the task of forming a staff of nursing sisters for the wards of the hospital at Scutari

It was early in November of the year above mentioned that Miss Nightingale arrived at Constantinople accompanied by her friends, Mr and Mrs Bracebridge, and about forty trained nurses; and they arrived only just in time for within a few days after they reached their destination several hundred soldiers, who had been wounded at Inkerman, were brought down to Scutari. What good Miss Nightingale effected by her power of organisation and how many lives were saved by her and her devoted band of nurses, can never be told; but all who came under the care of her and her sisters were loud in their expressions of gratitude.

The employment of ladies as hospital nurses was up to that time a thing unknown and undreamt of and therefore the feelings of the poor soldiers were all the keener. The public Press gave full vent to the expression of those grateful feelings, and so brought home to Englishmen and Englishwomen the sense of the value of Miss Nightingale's services. One who wrote home from Scutari at the time said; "Our soldiers are delighted with the nurses. A poor fellow burst into tears and exclaimed; 'I can't help crying when I see them. Only think of English ladies coming out here to nurse us; it is so homely and comfortable.'" Again; "Lady Stratford comes and sends frequently, and has made me her almoner for jellies, pies, and soups for the officers. Miss Nightingale only takes care of the men." In a short account of her published at the time of the war it was stated that she was "frequently known to stand for twenty hours, on the arrival of fresh detachments of sick, apportioning quarters, distributing stores, directing the labours of her corps, assisting at the most painful operations where her presence might soothe or support, and spending hours over men dying of cholera or fever... The difficulties thrown in her way by the restrictions of systems and the prejudices of individuals will scarcely be forgotten, or the daily contents by which she was compelled to wring from the authorities a scant allowance of the appliances needed in the daily offices of her band, until the co-operation of Mr. Macdonald, the distributor of the 'Times Fund,' enabled her to lay in stores and to introduce comfort and order into the department over which she presided."

In the spring of 1855 Miss Nightingale proceeded to the Crimea in order to inspect and where needful to improve, the hospital at Balaclava; but after commencing some useful and arduous work there she found herself prostrated by an attack of Crimean fever. On her partial recovery she could be persuaded to go no further than back to her special work at Scutari, where she remained until the conclusion of the war. Though Miss Nightingale needed no token of honour at her country's hands ` for all England rung with her praises ` yet the English public was gratified at learning that Queen Victoria had presented her with a jewel to be worn not as a mere brooch or ornament, but as it were the badge of an Order, from a design made by the Prince Consort. It bore the letters "VR" and the Crown in diamonds, and encircling it was the text "Blessed are the merciful." Beside this, however, another and more practical proof of the approval of the public was given; for some £50,000 or more was subscribed spontaneously by a grateful public, and, at Miss Nightingale's own request, was applied to founding an institution for the practical training of nurses, which had since that date, been more or less under her direction, though of late years her share in its management had not gone much beyond the stage of counsel and advice.

LATER YEARS

Though she suffered for many years from ill health, mainly the result of her labours in the Crimea and at Scutari, Miss Nightingale endeavoured to help on the cause which she so much at heart by writing letters of practical advice on subject connected with that cause. She published her "Notes on Hospitals" and "Notes on Nursing" ` both of these works have had a steady sale ` and until a reformation of our hospitals in the East had been effected, she issued her "Observations on the Sanitary State of the Army in India." This last work was printed by the Commissioners who were appointed some years since to inquire into the sanitary state of our Army in India, which was continually losing many of its finest men from causes which were, it was contended, chiefly preventable, such as moisture and decaying vegetation. Their report was placed in Miss Nightingale's hands, and she was asked to supply a commentary on its contents. She gave very sensible advice as to the measures she thought most needed, especially with regard to the drainage and the supply of water. This commentary she subsequently reprinted in a volume entitled "Life and Death in India." In it she recommended the abolition of the cesspools in Calcutta and the sinking of deep wells for drinking instead of being content with rain and surface water.

Miss Nightingale, however, has made her opinions known on sundry other subjects besides and beyond the mere operation of nursing and sanitary arrangements. For instance, in the shape of a letter addressed to the Lord Mayor of London, she gave expression to her opinion on "Voting-Charities," which she described as a "great nuisance," and denounced as practically a blunder. "I regard it," she wrote "as the best possible system for electing the least eligible"; and she added an expression of her strong fear that many subscribers to such charities were in the habit of "selling their votes," thus bringing the sacred cause of charity into contempt.

In general description of Miss Nightingale which appeared in "The City of the Crescent," published many years ago, it was aptly remarked; "You cannot hear her say a few sentences, no, not, even look at her, without feeling that she is an extraordinary being - simple, intellectual, sweet, full of love and benevolence. . . . She is a fascinating woman; she is tall and pale. . . . Through all her movements breathe that high intellectual calm which is God's won patent of the nobility."

VIEWS ON SANITATION

Of late years the world has heard little of Miss Nightingale, ill-health having limited her powers of action; but in the Summer of 1894 she wrote a valuable paper on "Sanitation," which was read(though not by herself) at the Hygienic Congress at Budapest, and which showed but few traces of decaying powers. That, Miss Nightingale's interest in medical and sanitary matters was unflagging to a very advanced period of life was shown by the fact that when a public meeting was held at the Mansion House, under the presidency of the Duke of Connaught, in order to raise funds for the support of St. Thomas's Hospital, although she was unable to be present and take part in the proceedings, she wrote a letter expressing her hearty approval of the scheme, and, indeed, of the management of the hospital, enclosing at the same time a donation of £100 as the most substantial proof of her good wishes. In 1895 Princess Christian paid the following tribute; "Although for long years Miss Nightingale ahs been unable to take any active part in the work which is so specially her own, she cannot fail to look with infinite satisfaction on the results of her labours and to see on every had members of her own sex fulfilling efficiently and with universal approval a mission which was formerly regarded as both unbecoming and unwomanly."

In May 1900, when Miss Nightingale celebrated her eightieth birthday, she was the recipient of congratulations from all parts of the world. An album was presented to her containing the signatures of six hundred and fifty ladies who had been trained either at St. Thomas's or at the Notting-hill Infirmary for Poor Law duties. Two of these were original probationers in 1860, many were nurses then at the front in South Africa, and some were working in the Colonies, Russia, and America. In an accompanying address the nurses said; "We rejoice that or are still able to see some of us from time to time and to take so lively a personal interest in our work. We feel grateful to you not only for the benefits which you have conferred upon us individually, but also for having by your example and wise direction created a noble calling for women generally."

ORDER OF MERIT

Acceptable as must have been the tributes from Princess Christian in 1895, and from the six hundred and fifty ladies on the occasion of Miss Nightingale's eightieth birthday, the honours received by her towards the end of 1907 and in the early months of 1908 perhaps afforded her even greater gratification. In December, 1907, Miss Nightingale's name was added to the small number of those deemed worthy of the high honour of the Order of Merit. Towards the end of January 1908 the German Emperor sent a most kindly message of greeting , accompanied by a bouquet of flowers, to the aged pioneer of scientific sick nursing, and on February 13 the Court of Common Council of the City of London decided to confer upon her honorary freedom of the City. The honour thought somewhat belated , was a signal one, the Baroness Burdett-Couttes being the only lady on whom it had been previously conferred. Miss Nightingale being too infirm herself to bear the excitement incident to a public appearance, her relative Mr L. H. Shore Nightingale, was deputed to attend at the Guildhall to receive the honour as her deputy. A little act characteristic of the practical kindness which had animated every deed of her long life was the request made to the Lord Mayor that for the gold casket might be substituted a plain wooden one, the money thereby saved being handed over at Miss Nightingale's wish to the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute of Nurses. This institution, which had developed out of Miss Nightingale's scheme for a co-ordinated system of competent district nursing was also the subject of what may be described as her last public action. When, in March, 1908, its executive found it necessary to make an appeal for help to enable the institute to fulfil more completely its beneficent function among the kind messages received was one from Miss Nightingale. Thus the sympathy which had marked her out to be chosen by Sidney Herbert for the mission to the Crimea in 1855 still animated her on her sick couch in her eighty-eighth year. From first to last her long career was devoted to the sick of every station in life, and her name will always be cherished in every country where there is a suffering human being and a felling of human sympathy for the sufferer.

It only remains to add that Florence Nightingale never had a brother, and that her only sister, Frances Parthenope - so named because she was born at Naples ` became in 1858 the second wife of Sir Harry Verney, Bart., many years MP for Buckingham, and died in May, 1890.

MARK BONHAM CARTER

THE TIMES TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 6 1994

LORD BONHAM-CARTER

LORD BONHAM-CARTER died of a sudden heart attack on Sunday evening while on holiday in the south of Italy. He was latterly Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, and a prominent and trenchant commentator on a wide range of issue. Earlier he had been the first chairman of the Race Relations Board and vice-chairman on the BBC.

Born into the Liberal purple but not living his most active years in a Liberal age, Mark Bonham Carter, despite these achievements, had to face considerable frustrations. He never had the opportunity to exercise what would undoubtedly have been his high talent for government. For different reasons there was a sense, as with his legendary uncle Raymond Asquith, of opportunity not fully matching ability.

Perhaps Bonham Carter's greatest achievement was to surmount any such disappointments with a continuing zest and gaiety. He exhibited the rare gift of widening his intellectual interests as he grew older, and the even rarer on of fortifying his cutting-edge with an increasing radicalism. Like Gladstone and few others he moved to the left, although without ever changing his party, as the decades went by. Sometimes his irascibility towards those of whom he did not approve increased as well, but overall the result was a final phase remarkably free from sourness and discouragement, and fertile in constructive contribution to public policy.

Mark Raymond Bonham Carter [created a life peer as Lord Bonham Carter in 1986] was the third child and elder son of Sir Maurice Bonham Carter and his wife Violet, the only daughter by his first marriage of H.H. Asquith, later 1^st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, the last Prime Minister of a Liberal Government. Violet Asquith, who perhaps reached the highest notes of any female orator yet heard in British politics, achieved fame and didactic authority first as Lady Violet Bonham Carter and then as Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, a 1964 life peer. Asquith himself was still alive for only four of Mark's childhood years, but this was enough for several Bonham Carter summers to be spent in a house alongside the Wharf at Sutton Courtenay, and his second wife the [fortunately] inimitable Margot, survived until the end of the Second World War.

Mark Bonham Carter, like his father and his five Asquith uncles went to Winchester and Balliol. His Oxford time was interrupted by war service in the Grenadiers. Twenty-two months of training and waiting culminated in an ill directed and murderous 22-hour battle on the Mareth Line in Tunisia. Bonham Carter wrote and published a vivid 50^th anniversary account of the near disaster. There, in March 1943, 14 officers of the 6^th Grenadier Battalion were killed, and another seven wounded. The lucky ones, including Bonham Carter, were taken prisoner and gradually transported to a German prison camp near Modena in the north of Italy, from where, six months after the battle, three of them escaped.

One procured a bicycle and decided to make for the Swiss frontier. He was shot before he got over it. The other two, Bonham Carter and a regular Grenadier then a major, decided on what seemed the more formidable but turned out to be the safer course. They walked down 500 miles of the peninsula until they reached the British lines near Bari. They moved mainly during the chilly nights of a dry autumn, and it took the whole of a month. They together overcame this great challenge of hazard and effort in amity and close companionship. But with great irony and illustrating how different are the friendships of circumstance from those of affinity, when they later met after a gap of years, they found they had little to say to each other.

Indirectly out of these adventures, however, Bonham Carter developed a more permanent group of friendships. As an escaped prisoner of war he was sent back to the Brigade of Guards depot at Windsor for a period of rest and recovery. While there he became a frequent guest at the Castle, and a continuing friend of the three surviving members of what was then the small and close-knit core of the royal family. The present Queen [then Princess Elizabeth and aged 17] recently described to a friend of Bonham Carter's how it was rather dull at Windsor during the war and that the arrival of Mark, who made a lot of good jokes, cheered them all up.

In the early post-war years he was several times an autumn visitor to Balmoral and is said to have been particularly successful both at sliding down the banisters to arrive at the feet of a marble statue of Prince Albert and at striking just the right note to appeal to the keen but simple sense of humour of King George VI. His sporting success was less marked. On one occasion he lightly winged one of the King's detectives and was taken off shooting game birds and sent deer-stalking alone with a ghillie.

Perhaps inevitably there were rumours at this stage of a possible matrimonial romance with Princess Margaret. Although it came to nothing, as was indeed almost certainly fortunate for it is difficult to imagine anyone less temperamentally suited to be a royal consort than Bonham Carter, he was undoubtedly a key figure in the fashionable set which centred around her during those last Georgian years.

However he kept plenty of time to develop his own interests and career. He fought the Barnstaple division of Devon at the 1945 general election; he went back to Balliol and completed his degree; he spent a year in America as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow at the University of Chicago; and he joined William Collins and Sons, and began a serious publishing career which was to be his main occupation for nearly 20 years and a fluctuating connection until the late 1980`s

In 1955 he married Leslie Nast, a very Anglicised American who had been briefly the wife of Lord St Just. She was the daughter of Conde Nast, the founder of Vogue and associated publications. The brittle picture conveyed by these bare facts - a young [25] divorced peeress with a background of international glossy magazines - could hardly be more misleading about Leslie Bonham Carter, a woman of exceptional warmth, sense and kindness. She already had one Grenfell [st just] daughter and there were then three Bonham Carter ones, the whole amounting to an unusually close extended family.

In 1958 Mark Bonham Carter got the only lucky political break in his life, and seized it with verve. As candidate at Torrington he achieved the first Liberal by-election victory since the 1920s. His majority was only 219 and it gave him no more than 18 months` tenure for it did not hold against the Macmillan success in the 1959 general election. In the House of Commons, at a time when his sister Laura's husband Jo Grimond was leading his troops "towards the sound of gunfire" in the first wave of Liberal revival, Bonham Carter achieved a good short-term impact but was much struck by the hostility with which old Tory acquaintances treated the usurper of one of their seats. It underpinned his position as a "realignment of the left" man.

In 1964 he was again unsuccessful at Torrington and thereafter abandoned constituency contests although not his political interest or his radical commitment. In 1966 he accepted appointment as the first chairman of the Race Relations Board, which had been set up with very limited powers under the somewhat weak Act of 1965. However the new Home Secretary encouraged Bonham Carter not only to exploit his existing powers to the full but also to campaign for a stronger legislative framework, which was enacted in 1968.

Perhaps surprisingly in view of his acerbity and occasional impatience, Bonham Carter proved a great success a race relations administrator and campaigner. It was a liberal and optimistic hour in this field compared with subsequent difficulties, but Bonham Carter rode this favourable current with a mixture of hard-headedeness and commitment which few others could have commanded. He was also an excellent picker of staff. In 1971, following an amalgamation of the Race Relations Board, which was concerned with legal enforcement, and the Community Relations Council, which was more concerned with fostering goodwill, he became chairman of the new joint Commission and remained at this post until 1977.

From 1975 to 1980 when he was vice-chairman of the BBC he worked amicably under Edward Heath's nominee as chairman, Michael [Lord] Swann, to uphold the traditional values of a politically independent and public service rather than commercially-orientated Corporation. This Experience made him a trenchant critic of Thatcherite broadcasting policy. From 1958 to 1982 he was a director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, taking a particular interest in the ballet.

Although he did not contemplate fighting another parliamentary seat, Bonham Carter was from the first days of the SDP an enthusiastic supporter of its alliance and ultimate merger with the Liberal Party. He was active on the ground at by-elections and in other campaigns. He was as natural a choice for a Liberal life of a century earlier, and was a more engaged performer on the floor of the House of Lords. His combination of social self-confidence and critical intelligence made him an exceptionally effective critic of government policies in that forum. After the merger of the two parties in 1988 affairs spokesman and a leading member of that party's front bench. He was a wholly committed European, but his active interests also ranged from Poland to Hong Kong as well as taking in many domestic issues. His health was not perfect in the 1990s, but he did not allow this to prevent his continuing to be one of the most active, and therefore now most sadly missed, members of the second chamber.

Inside and outside politics, he had a wide range of devoted friends. He is survived by his wife, stepdaughter and three daughters.

EUGENE BODICHON

`The Times` on 31 January 1885

Dr Eugene Bodichon, one of the last of the little group known as the `Republicans of 30` and the author of many valuable works on Algeria, died at Algiers on the 28^th inst. aged 74. Born of a noble Breton family at Nantes, Dr Bodichon early showed that adherence to Republican principles shared by his intimate friends, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Guepin of Nantes, and others, and was associated with them in their work of political propaganda. Dissatisfied with the conditions of things in France, he settled in Algeria 40 years ago, devoting himself to gratuitous services as a physician among the poor, and amassing materials for his `Considerations sur l`Algerie`, cited by the late eminent historian M Heni as second in interest and importance to the writings of the late General Daumas. In 1848, on being appointed Corresponding member of the Chamber of Deputies for Algiers, he immediately advised the liberation of the slaves throughout the province of Algier, which was done. On the establishment of the Empire his movements were closely watched and the types of his work `De l`Humanite` were broken up by the Imperial police. The work, which contains a striking study of the first Napoleon, was afterwards published at Brussels. Dr Bodichon was one of the first to draw attention to the valuable febrifugal qualities of the eucalyptus globulus, and of late years entirely devoted himself to its dissemination throughout the colony.

MARGARET SMYTH

THE TIMES  1991

MARGARET SMYTH

Margaret Jane Smyth, CBE, former matron of St Thomas's Hospital and president of the Royal College of Nursing, has died aged 94. She was born on September 23, 1897.

With the death of Margaret Jane Smyth, one of the last links with Florence Nightingale has been severed. She was the granddaughter of Sir Thomas Crawford, one of the original members of the Nightingale Fund Council, a body established to administer the monies subscribed by a grateful nation in thanks for the work of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean war.

She was matron of St Thomas's Hospital and superintendent of the Nightingale Training School [1945-55], chairman of General Nursing Council [1955-60], and president of the Royal College of Nursing [1960-62]. Her last public duty was to receive the Maundy Money from the Queen in Chichester Cathedral in 1986.

Margaret Smyth worked on the land in Somerset after leaving school but at the age of 20 took a course on health visiting and school nursing in Bristol. She followed this with midwifery training and a three-year course in maternity and child welfare before entering the Nightingale training school at St Thomas's Hospital. She did extremely well in her general training and was soon appointed as children's ward sister. For a short time she was in charge of "mother craft", an out-patient department, followed by three years as matron of St Thomas's Babies Hospital.

In 1937 she was appointed principal of St Christopher's Nursery Training College in Tunbridge Wells, where she might have stayed, but with the war imminent she was recalled to St Thomas's as assistant matron. The war-time headquarters of St Thomas's was at Kingston upon Thames and she was responsible for the nursing in a large area of Surrey and Part of Hampshire. During the bombing of London she set an example of courage common sense and compassion often risking her life to help others.

In 1941, when St Thomas's had received many direct hits, the decision was made for the hospital to move its in patients to a hutted hospital at Hydestile near Godalming, vacated by Australian troops, and Miss Smyth was appointed acting matron. Her high standards, quick thinking and sympathy for all concerned in the move ensured that others could face up to the many problems that arose. Margaret Smyth was shy and reserved but recognised the need to supply stability to those with whom she worked. Hydestile became a very happy community.

When the war ended she was recalled to London, this time to be matron of St Thomas's and superintendent of the Nightingale Training School. She was also involved in drafting a training course combining general nursing and health visiting which would meet with university and General Nursing Council approval. She was also instrumental in the establishment of a home for retired nurses at Gerrards Cross.

She was appointed OBE in 1959. In the 1960s she gradually gave up her work in London and retired to Chichester.

Margaret Smyth was a delightful hostess, maintaining an interest in the many members of her former staff who came to visit her, and delighted in seeing their children or grand-children. She worshipped regularly in the hospital chapel and subsequently in the parish churches where she lived. She enjoyed her garden and cat and worked for Chichester Cathedral as a doorkeeper and genuine "friend".