Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education and Literature: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volume 5

Political Notables: Letters and Notes

Political Notables: Letters and Notes John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill and Quetelet were Nightingale’s two great mentors on matters philosophical and methodological. Mill’s influence began earlier (she read him when growing up) and led on to a number of different subjects. As well as law, free will and necessity , the subject of her first letter to him, they worked together on Poor Law reform, notably the introduction of professional nursing into workhouse infirmaries in London (when Mill was an mp and assisted in getting legislation passed). There is no direct correspondence on this (Edwin Chadwick acted as intermediary) but Mill’s role will be seen in Public Health Care. The first set of letters with Mill (below) deals with Nightingale’s monumental Suggestions for Thought, which she had had printed largely to facilitate his commenting on it. Suggestions for Thought itself will appear in a later volume, but its central subject matter of law, free will and necessity is so germane to all of her writing and work that these letters are included here. The second and better-known set of letters, on women’s rights, especially the vote and women in medicine,1 was exchanged just after the work on the Metropolitan Poor Bill. Nightingale discussed Mill’s 1 For the full correspondence see Alfred C. Meyer, ‘‘Florence Nightingale as a Leader in the Religious and Civic Thought of Her Time,’’ Hospitals (July 1936):78-84. No author’s name is given but the source is described as a private collection of Alfred C. Meyer, president of the Board of Trustees of Michael Reese Hospital. Current locations of the manuscripts are given here. Mill’s letters are also available in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill vols. 15 and 16. See also Evelyn L. Pugh, ‘‘Florence Nightingale and J.S. Mill Debate Women’s Rights.’’ / 369 reaction to her Suggestions with another reader of them, her friend Benjamin Jowett. Even years later she could not understand his great reliance on law without it necessarily implying a Law-Giver.2 She also discussed the question of her support of the suffrage association with Jowett.3 All the letters directly between Mill and Nightingale have been published, although the only edition that includes both sides of the correspondence (by Alfred Meyer) is scarcely available. What is new in this Collected Works is the inclusion of the wider network within which this correspondence occurred: exchanges with Edwin Chadwick and Helen Taylor4 (Nightingale used the former as an intermediary and Mill used the latter) and Clementia Taylor (honorary secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Society, no relation to Helen Taylor). Nightingale’s previously unpublished letter to Taylor (see p 404 below), on signing whatever J.S. Mill sends her, is especially amusing. Here, too, there is a substantial number of previously unpublished notes and letters by Nightingale about Mill. It is possible that some of these notes, especially on free will and necessity, were draft letters to Mill but not actually sent. Some of the letters, notably to her father and Benjamin Jowett, presumably were sent. These show considerable dissatisfaction with Mill’s position. Clearly the debate was not over, in her mind, when the correspondence ceased. Nightingale’s first attempt to meet Mill occurred during the meetings of the International Statistical Congress, presided over by her other great mentor, L.A.J. Quetelet. She wanted the two to meet, but it seems that Mill was unavailable or otherwise declined. The approach was made through Chadwick, whom she had asked to bring Mill to a breakfast. When this failed Nightingale asked Chadwick for an introduction , which he thought was unnecessary, and suggested that she write Mill directly. She thanked him for the ‘‘permission’’ to do so and did.5 Chadwick had prepared the way some months earlier by giv2 See Jowett’s notes of a conversation with Nightingale 1 September 1881, Balliol College Archives 1 H 49. 3 Letter 25 May 1868, Balliol College Archives, in Quinn and Prest, eds., Dear Miss Nightingale #166, 144. 4 Daughter of Harriet Taylor (later Mill) by her first husband, Helen Taylor (1831-1907) was, like her mother, a suffrage leader, later a member of the London School Board. 5 Letter 3 September 1860, Add Mss 45770 f160. 370 / Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics ing Mill a copy of Nightingale’s just-published Notes on Nursing, so that the first...