Nurses gone rogue to do good. Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole

Nurses gone rogue to do good.  Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole

Recently, I taught a general education class where 17 of the 19 students were nurses. When it came time for group research projects on someone who exemplified the love of God and neighbor from a past century, my students lobbied hard to research Florence Nightingale. Catherine of Siena, patron saint of nursing, took a distant second place. The others settled for poor souls like Augustine of Hippo, Francis of Assisi or Thomas Aquinas. Florence’s life really motivated those called to healing. The Florence Nightingale Museum went nearer the top of my pilgrimage sites in London.

Thomas Hospital sits at the landing of the London Bridge. Big Ben looms just across the Thames. As I headed toward the hospital’s main entrance, I saw a large statue of a woman. I took out my camera thinking it would be of Florence Nightingale. My GPS indicated this was where her museum would be found. Instead, the majestic bronzed statue was of Mary Seacole (1805-1881) Who was she? I would discover she was, in some sense, Florence’s rival as the nursing heroine of the Crimean War. This was getting interesting!

Mary Seacole (1805-1881) was born in Jamaica to a Caribbean mother and Scottish military father. She volunteered to be one of the 40 nurses that famously went with Nightingale to Scutari, a region on the eastern side of Istanbul to care for British soldiers. She wanted to further a scandalous idea: Imagine women caring for male soldiers near the battlefields as they lay dying in filthy conditions! Unheard of! Never done before! Promiscuous behavior!

Statue of Mary Seacole 

The Crimean war pitted Russia against Britain, France, modern-day Turkey and Italy. Access to the holy land was one of the complicated reasons for war as was keeping Russia from expanding its territory. Young British solders were writing home about the terrible conditions. The public was aghast at the horror their young men faced. More than 3000 British soldiers ultimately died and 17,000 succumbed to disease and infection. 

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)  took on the British Army and knocked on doors and ignored protests to gain approval to organize and the first group of nurses to be sent to the front lines. Proud Mary Seacole, an experienced-trained nurse who had a incurable love of travel and adventure had worked in several cholera outbreaks was not chosen to join her group—was it because of her skin color? She and others wondered. Mary determined to go help on her own. She bought a ticket and sailed East. Mary set up a hotel near the battlefields where she offered herbal remedies alongside of nursing care. When the war ended, Mary Seacole wrote a delightful and astute autobiography that speaks to race, gender and the core need for kindness and claiming freedom, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. (Read Mary Seacole's autobiography here).  I later learned that this statue of Mary Seacole was the first erected in Britain depicting the heroism of a Black woman. It took until 2016.  Wow.  British schoolchildren probably learn about her these days. I am catching up.

Walking toward the hospital, I followed a banner that said “Florence Nightingale Museum” and headed down by the emergency room entrance. The location seemed an appropriate place to honor Britain’s super nurse whose Notes on Nursing was a major textbook during the 19^th century. She studied the practical aspects of nursing as well as hospitals across the world to see how design and ventilation could aid in healing.

Just inside of the door was a stained-glass window with Florence—the Lady with the Lamp-- (a sort of Aladdin’s lamp which was nothing like the lamp she actually carried to survey the squalid wards in Scutari—see below). It is inscribed with the words, “The service of God is the service of man.”  Underneath Florence are two books: The New Testament and Plato’s Republic. A British soldier and a nurse are shaking hands atop the book symbolizing the détente she forged between the British military and the scandalous nurses.

What motivated this woman? What kind of family influenced her? What about faith?

She was named Florence for the city in Italy where she was born while her parents took a several years-long honeymoon. They’d already been traveling long enough to have her older sister,  Parthenope (named for a place near Naples), who was often the only companion of her sister that they were described as “suffocatingly close.”  Florence was a gifted student taught mostly by her father. She learned to read the Bible in original languages, (see her Hebrew grammar book in the photo) loved philosophy and statistics.

 At 16 years of age she felt God called her to be a nurse. She had cared for family and others during a flu outbreak and found the work satisfying and important. Her family rigorously opposed the idea. They wanted her to marry and be a proper Victorian lady living in a proper manor house. She refused three suitors and sought out  nursing training all over Europe, traveling to see what kind of care was being offered in other countries. Her family did not want her to pursue nursing but her father continued to financially offer support as she traveled. Many times Florence’s funds went to pay for care for those she met.

Nurses, at the time, were seen as low-class, poorly-paid worker. Hospitals were places for poor people to die. People who could afford doctors and good care would be tended to at home by visiting doctors and loving family members. (How health care assumptions and practice have changed)!

Florence’s efforts were social reform efforts. She focused on providing basic health care to those seen as disposable—poor people and young enlisted soldiers--who could be easily replaced.

Florence Nightingale
after returning from Scutari

A photo of a thin, wan Florence is the enduring one for me. She returned from the war with unwanted fame. Her story and image had been on the cover of magazines and newspapers all over Britain. After the war she traveled under the name Miss Smith to avoid unwanted attention. She returned a young woman plagued by physical ailments for the rest of her long life. Mention was made of a disease from unpasteurized goat milk and unsanitary food—she had eaten what the soldiers in Scutari ate.

I held that image of her in my mind as I turned the corner to see the exhibit of some of the 200 articles and books she would write in the following decades of her life as she lay the foundations for modern nursing. She was a nurse, scathed by war, but energized by a call to care. It is easy to imagine her legacy as one built on long-years of bedside nursing  but her lasting contribution rests on administrative, architectural and training innovations she wrote about and put into practice in Britain's first nursing program at St. Thomas Hospital.

The museum mentioned a religious tidbit that I found consistent with Florence’s views. She took the call to care for the sick in Matthew 25--"I was sick and you visited me," seriously but she found working with some of the religious nurses—notably a group of Catholic nuns—frustrating. When the nuns put their top priority on saving souls, Florence resisted. Seek to save the bodies first—souls can’t be separated out so easily.

Seeking out the stories of the past can easily turn the stories unearthed into hagiography, to one-sided views that show only the positive.  That was something Florence Nightingale did not want. She hoped that other women would follow their vocational calls and work hard understanding that to be called to do something is to be given divine trust.  She wrote a remarkable response to a letter Lemuel Moss, an American Baptist ministry who later would be the president of Indiana University, on 13 Sept, 1868.  He like me, wanted to know more about her.

The type of lamp Florence carried
through Scutari's wards at night

"[To] give you information about my own life, though if I could it would be to show you how a woman of very ordinary abilities has been led by God--by strange and unaccustomed paths--to do in His service what He did in hers. I have worked hard, very hard--that is all--and I have never refused God anything, though being naturally a very shy person person, most of my life has been distasteful to me. I have no peculiar gifts. And I can honestly assure any young lady, if she will but try to walk, she will soon be able to run the 'appointed course.'"

She then enumerates advise for following a vocation:

1. "Qualify yourself for [the work] as a man does for his work." Get the best education, information and training. 
2. "If you are called to man's work, no not enact a woman's privileges...inaccuracy...weakness...to be a muddlehead."  Be good at what you do. No excuses. 
3. When others declare "you had a personal freedom" that they did not. Perhaps take her response: "Nothing could be well further from the truth."  Don't let any belief that others had an easier path disuade you. Face your own challenges. 
4. "But to all women, I would say, look upon your work, whether it be an accustomed or unaccustomed work, as upon a trust confided to you. This will keep you alike from discouragement or presumption, from idleness and from overtaxing yourself. When God leads the way, He has bound himself to help you all the way."  Trust God and be diligent. 

She finished the letter declaring, "I do not wish my name to remain, nor my likeness. That God alone should be remembered I wish."

Sorry, Florence. We still need your example. We need to see your face. We need your advice. And Mary, we need your entreprenurial example. You did things your own way and added flair and a smile. When official doors closed on you, you hopped on a ship and set up shop. You nursed people of many cultures, countries and classes transcending social norms. So glad that statue finally got put up. So glad to have met you as I passed by London. I will remember you two.

(See Florence Nightingale on Women, Medicine, Midwifery and Prostitution, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, vol. 8, 69)

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So Many Women in God's "A-R-M-Y"

We had to push our way into the Chester Cathedral. The Freedom Service we wanted to attend was about to start. The crowd at the entrance, it turned out, was thick with tourists not because everyone was heading to the sanctuary but because the cathedral has a constant "queue for the loo."

Once inside we joined several hundred people to learn about the ecumenical efforts to combat human trafficking in North West England. The Cathedral choir sang an introit from the Song of Songs,  the chair of the local council on human trafficking led the opening prayer, the Baptist praise band helped us sing "Break Every Chain, Break Every Chain."  We stood and sang a Charles Wesley hymn, "Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night." A short video dramatized forced "bonded" labor on a large screen, then Major Kathryn Taylor from the Salvation Army climbed into the pulpit.

Major Kathryn Taylor,
Sept. 17, 2017,
Chester Catherdral

Wearing a standard issue uniform, Major Taylor told of driving before sunrise in London to pick up a beautiful, fragile young women from a safe house in London. She was the designated driver to transport her one of the programs to help her reclaim her life. The story was moving and Major Taylor acknowledged she wanted the story to tug at us. To feel something can lead us to do something.  Major Taylor told of early efforts in the Salvation Army to combat human trafficking.  Exploiting the vulnerable is not new. I suspected she was going to tell the "Snead affair" and she did. I had read about it a few weeks earlier when I visited the Salvation Army museum. (Keep reading!) The Salvation Army had been my first stop in London for two big reasons: 1. you can't tell the story of women's contribution to the Christian mission without the Salvation Army. They may have had more women in their leadership ranks than another other Christian group.  2. My grandfather was a Salvation Army officer. I can still see that saintly man ringing the bell by the red kettle seeking donations for those in need. 

William Booth College sits directly across from the Denmark Hill Station in London, serviced by the Overground. (Who knew there were Underground and Overground trains in London?) A flight of concrete stairs leading to the entrance are flanked by two statues:  Mrs. Catherine Booth (1829-1890), named the “mother of the Army” is at the left and William Booth (1829-1912), her husband, named the “founder of the Salvation Army, is on the right. The organization they started depicted them aptly as co-leaders.
 On a late-July visit, I signed in at the reception desk, collected a day pass, and took the elevator to the top floor to visit the museum and the reading room. The first exhibit was of Catherine and William with one of her bonnets on full display. The next panel that outlined the Army’s history with images of Army officers, all male and female pairs in full uniform.  Their clergy, from the onset, has been male and female, mostly married couples who had to become officers together, continue to model a mutuality of ministry. 

Later as I read through a biography of Catherine Booth, I learned that the first argument Catherine and William had was over the social equality of women and men. William had quoted an old saying, “woman has a fiber more in her heart and a cell less in her brain.” Catherine argued that men and women are intellectual equals. Women, were disadvantaged by lack of access to education but not to any “shortcoming of nature.” Her insistence on equality and mutual respect took root in her marriage and became a creed of the Salvation Army: “there is no male or female, Jew or Greek, slave nor free—all are on in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). The Army became the object of much ridicule for their inclusion of women in leadership, including preaching, but they never have changed their stance.


Reading of early efforts to combat the “white slave trade,” what we would call human trafficking today left me deeply impressed by the Salvation Army’s courage to step into the social struggles of their day. It left me also a bit depressed. None of the social ills they combated in the 19th century, from settling refugees from war or feeding the hungry have been eliminated in the 21st. They believed then and now, that with salvation and active service, the misery on earth will be replaced by neighborly love. The optimism of Christian charity continues to motivate.

Scandal is always interesting and one public relations stunt caught my attention. It is referred to as the Elisa Armstrong incident. In 1885, efforts in Parliament stalled to combat the sale of young women into prostitution or service. An investigative journalist. W.T. Snead of the Pall Mall Gazette, was encouraged by a leading proponent of new legislation to investigate sexual exploitation of minors. Snead agreed to investigate. A couple of women, one from the newspaper and another from the Salvation Army infiltrated some local brothels and over the next week spent 100 British pounds buying  children offered for sex.

Snead thought something more needed to be done to bring these children to the public attention. So with help from his colleagues at the paper and Salvation Army, including the Booth’s son, Bramwell, they arranged to buy a young girl, Eliza Armstrong, from her mother under the guise that she would be a domestic servant to the older man (Snead). She was then taken to a hotel where they faked her being assaulted and whisked her from the country to be cared for by the Salvation Army. Snead then wrote of the transaction not disclosing the fact that it was a set up. His article, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” received international attention. The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 was soon passed and raised the age of sexual consent from 13 to 16. The law made it a criminal offence to buy girls for prostitution or made buying and selling children illegal both for the buyer and guardians who sought monetary gain from their children. The set up was soon disclosed. The girl’s father had not agreed to the sale and Snead was arrested and sentenced to three months in jail. He was well-treated and the Salvation Army museum displays his tan prison uniform and tells the story as a not-to-be-repeated mistake that actually made a difference.

Once I finished looking through the museum, I asked to see Catherine Booth’s tract on “Female Ministry.” I had read it in seminary several decades ago and wanted to see an original copy. The archivist brought me three items: the first version of the pamphlet entitled “Female Teaching” from 1859 and the second edition “Female Ministry” from 1861. He also brought me a copy of the pamphlet that engendered Booth's response, “Reasons for not co-operating in the Alleged “Sunderland Revivals” in an address to his congregation by A.A. Rees.” In this pamphlet Rees, was explaining why he was boycotting the revivals. He was all for revivals but not for the “methods” used in this one.

Rees was opposing the ministry of Phoebe Palmer, an American Methodist lay evangelist who held revivals in the British Isles from 1859-1862. Palmer was accompanied by her husband, a physician, Dr. Walter Palmer.  Women preachers were rare and Phoebe proved popular and successful with thousands turning up to hear her preach. Rees had written to Dr. Palmer expressing his discomfort at his allowing his wife to speak publicly.  Catherine Booth had not been to hear Mrs. Palmer but she found Rev. Ree’s argument hitting hard in that same sore spot of inequality which she had battled early with her own husband.

She challenged Rees to rely on more than custom and quotations from writers such as Shakespeare and Cowper. She clarifies her view of women and then gives a biblical defense for women teaching: 

[God] treats her as an independent, responsible being; amenable to the same law, and subject to the same penalties, as her companion; and, by the terrible sentence passed upon her for her disobedience, Jehovah unmistakeably  [sic] indicates that he held her equally capable of understanding and obeying his law. Even in her present state of subjection as a wife, she is only allowed to submit to her own husband "as it is fit in the Lord;" her own enlightened conscience being left arbiter of that fitness. We hope Mr. Rees is able to justify his motives as a Christian minister, in thus parading before the public mind views and sentiments so degrading to at least half his race, and so dishonouring [sic] to his religion and his God. (p.6, 1861, 2^nd ed.).

Catherine’s defense was written more than 150 years ago and she honed her arguments in each subsequent version. I prefer the early ones that are full of youthful passion. Any of the versions she wrote of her penny pamphlet remain worth reading and can be found online. Here's one link.  http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/view?docId=VAB7105

Back at Chester Cathedral, Major Taylor reminded us that all persons have God-given dignity, even those who traffic others. The radical faith of the Salvation Army was obvious in her words and in our final prayer:  Awaken our hearts and deepen our commitment to work for a world where all people are free and able to live with dignity and freedom. We ask for conversion of heart for traffickers and for strong laws to protect victims. Give us wisdom and courage so that we may find ways to ensure Your freedom is the gift for all people. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Mary--Queen of Heaven, Refuge from the Rain

The Oratory in Oxford. The man in the photo is
counting the steps to the altar. He is getting
married soon.

I ducked into to the Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga in Oxford for two reasons. First, it was pouring rain. When I left the library, the sky was blue, but this is England, not San Diego. Weather changes quickly.

Second, J.R.R Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings faithfully attended this church and had a well-known devotion to the Virgin Mary. He once wrote to a friend that his, "own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity " were found in "Our Lady."  I hadn't known the location of the church, but in the rain, it was the place with an open door. 

The building is a soaring French Gothic structure. Inside, a couple was marking off the length of the center aisle. A priest appeared and they began discussing an upcoming wedding ceremony. Another priest entered from a side door with a rainbow-colored feather duster and began to dust the statue of St. Philip Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, the priests that serve this church. A family entered, sheltering as I was, and asked me questions about the church. I knew nothing. I needed to get out of the entryway. 

I headed up the right aisle and found the Lady Chapel. Somehow, even on a rainy afternoon, a celestial light was streaming down on the statue of the Queen of Heaven and the Holy Child. There was a small stool in the alcove. I sat down and just gazed at the beauty and serenity. I had once served a church with marvelous stained-glass windows. I retreated there when stressed or perplexed to let the virgin blue, prophetic reds, and royal purples just surround me with light and beauty. Today, I could hear the rain, and I knew I was taking refuge on so many levels.

    

To study women in Christianity, is to circle round the figure of Mary of Nazareth. There is no other female figure considered more holy or held up as model of virtue and faith. She is often idealized as the perfected vision of womanhood and motherhood. I see her as a model of discipleship. She submitted to the Spirit and God guided her life according to a larger plan of redemption and renewal.

The Gospel of Luke, introduces Mary as a thoughtful, prophetic witness to God’s care for the lowly and oppressed. Luke locates her in an extended priestly family awaiting the coming of the messiah. One of my summer school professors, Fr. Nicolas King, S.J. calls the Gospel of Luke, “the gospel of the Holy Spirit” because it is abundantly clear from the very beginning that the Spirit of God is in charge of the story* Fr. King, a humble, witty Jesuit, told us to look for the Spirit’s fingerprints by looking for language that points to something or someone “being filled”—an act of saturating something that is empty, parched or open  or "fulfilled"—a word that points to something promised that has now been delivered. I loved hunting the gospel these fingerprints of the Spirit.

Fr. Nicholas King, S.J.
Photo from Kevin Mayhew Ltd.

From the first sentence, the gospel writer claims to be writing a “narrative of the things that have been fulfilled among us.” (1:1). The “things” Luke will describes as being fulfilled are the hopes and visions of Israel as foretold in the Old Testament. Even the names of the observant Jews from the priestly family introduced in chapter one push this aim.  Zechariah means “the Lord has remembered”; Elisabeth means, “My God has sworn an oath,” Mary--a Greek form of Miriam, means “beloved” or “wished for child.”  John means “God has been gracious.”  The names point to the specific holy role each must enact. They are actively expecting God to intervene in their troubled word filled with political intrigue and religious oppression and fulfill the promise for a new king and a renewed kingdom.

The Spirit actively is filling those who are a part of God’s action. Gabriel, the angel who visits Zechariah to announce John the Baptism’s birth says, “there will be joy and exultation…and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit right from his mother’s womb.” (1:15). Gabriel appears a second time to Mary and says, “The power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore that which is conceived is holy and will be called Son of God” (1:35). Later in the chapter, Elisabeth hears Mary’s greeting and “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:41) and she recognizes that Mary is carrying a special child. Soon Zechariah gets his voice back when he affirms his son will be called John and Zechariah is “filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied” (1:64). Every one in the family from young to old is filled with God’s Spirit and a part of God’s plan.

Mary, we are told “kept these events in her heart” (2:51). Other translations use the words “ponder” or “treasured.”  The story continues throughout the gospel. Jesus full of the Holy Spirit (that descended on him like a dove) returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the desert (4:1). He returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit (4:14) where he reads the scroll in his hometown synagogue that declares, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore he has anointed me to give good news to the destitute. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to prisoners and recovery-of-sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (4:18-19).

Like mother, like son. Being aware of the Spirit-at-work to bring God’s promises to fulfillment, is the characteristic that sets Mary apart as a model of discipleship. Her steadfastness to say “yes” to the uncontrollable actions of the Spirit, even when that led to puzzlement, social rejection, and great personal suffering is why she remains known to Orthodox Christians, the “theotokos,” the God-bearer, to Catholics as “mediator,” one who intercedes for those who suffer or are in great need, and to Protestants as an exemplar of discipleship that walks in the way of the Spirit.

After a few minutes, I stood and surveyed the front of the sanctuary. Two rows of ornamental statues stood behind the altar. A list identifying them was posted on a nearby column. It named the figures on the reredos (so that is what they are called)!  Many of my favorite women in Christian history were there: St. Frideswide, St. Hilda, St. Helen, St. Winifred, St. Edith, St. Bertha, St. Gertrude, St. Julia, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Cecilia, St. Monica, St. Teresa.

I serve and worship in a post-reformation, holiness church, where no ancient saints are depicted. I know the word saint means one who seeks to live a holy life. These statues honor ordinary people who lived their faith with courage and humility. Others noticed and were helped. As an ordained women, I have some differences with the Catholic church, but honoring women and men-- mentors in the faith who have followed Jesus-- is not one of them.

When the rain slowed, I walked back to the entrance of the church. I turned and surveyed the sanctuary. Jesus was right in the center surrounded by statues reminding all who enter the church that many of his followers point the way to active faith energized by the Spirit. As I neared the exit, there was one more statue, I paused to see who it was: Joseph. Everybody in the family, present and accounted for.

* Quotations from: The New Testament: Freshly translated with a cutting-edge commentary. Nicholas King, S.J. (Kevin Mayhew Ltd: London, 2004, 2012).