The Florence Nightingale Museum has a new prize exhibit.
This is the customised wheelchair of Florence Nightingale. The pioneering nurse used it to get about her Mayfair home following her return from the Crimean War. Now, thanks to a grant from The Company of Nurses Charitable Trust, the wheelchair is going on public display for the first time in the UK.
The world's most famous nurse was, herself, often cursed with ill-health. She lived to the ripe old age of 90, but spent much of her time bedridden from her 30s onwards. The wheelchair gave her greater mobility about her home. It was from its seat that she conducted many important conversations and formulated ideas that would go on to shape modern nursing. As Brenda Griffiths of the Company of Nurses Charitable Trust observes: "She accomplished so much despite her limited mobility. It is such a positive message for wheelchair users today."
The wheelchair forms the centrepiece of a new permanent gallery at the Florence Nightingale Museum, located at St Thomas's Hospital on the South Bank, Military Nursing in Peace and War, which charts the history of military nursing from Nightingale's reforms up to our own day. Among other things, the gallery explores the contributions of Mary Seacole, whose statue stands around the corner near the hospital entrance.
It's a promising, positive development from a museum whose future looked so uncertain only a couple of years ago.
Military Nursing in Peace and War opens on 24 June 2023 at the Florence Nightingale Museum. Access is included in entrance price. Images courtesy of the Florence Nightingale Musuem
See also: The previous gallery to open, exploring Nightingale's life in 200 objects.
