Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 in the Italian city of Florence and moved with her family as a baby to the East Midlands in 1821.
The Nightingale family was wealthy and well-connected and Florence’s father William Shore had inherited the Lea estate (and with it the right to change his surname) from his uncle, Peter Nightingale.
Her mother, Frances ‘Fanny’ Smith was the sister of Benjamin Leigh Smith who was an outspoken critic of the slave trade.
Benjamin had a son of the same name who became a famed Arctic explorer on board the Eira.
Florence Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing and a profoundly talented statistician and advocate of social reform
On their return to England the family built Lea Hurst, a 15-bedroom family home in Derbyshire, where they lived until 1825.
Lea Hurst, located in Holloway, Matlock, remained the family’s summer home and Nightingale returned there consistently throughout her life.
She is known as the founder of modern nursing and a profoundly talented statistician and advocate of social reform.
After tending to soldiers during the Crimean War from 1854 she soon garnered a reputation for professional excellence and was known as the ‘lady with the lamp’ due to her continued observations of the wounded and ill overnight.
Nightingale highlighted issues surrounding hygiene and living conditions for soldiers, noting that far more were dying of infection or illnesses such as typhoid and dysentery than their battle wounds.
She implemented hand washing practices and called for the British government to help improve sanitation. The sanitary commission cleaned out sewers and improved ventilation, drastically reducing the death rate at scutari hospital in Istanbul.
Florence Nightingale played a key role in the 1860s in advising on the redesign and management of the biggest hospital in the area, the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, which opened in 1869 with a wing named in her honour.
The hospital remained the primary hospital in the city of Derby until the opening of the Royal Derby in 2010.
Demolition works began in 2010 on most of the building with plans for only the the two iconic ‘pepper pot’ towers to remain.
A statue of Florence Nightingale survives outside the hospital’s site to this day after being first unveiled in 1924, 14 years after her death at the age of 90.
She helped found the first secular nursing school in the world and her name is synonymous with nursing of the highest standard.
The Nightingale Pledge is now taken by new nurses, and the Florence Nightingale Medal and is the highest international distinction a nurse can achieve.
International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.