Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volume 12

Appendixes

Appendixes This page intentionally left blank Appendix A: Biographical Sketches Sarah E. Wardroper S arah Elizabeth Wardroper, née Bisshopp (c1812-92), was the widowed mother of four children when she was appointed in 1853 as matron at St Thomas’ Hospital.1 Nightingale, like most other authors, called her a ‘‘gentlewoman,’’ as she had been the wife of a professional man. F.F. Cartwright, however, notes that Wardroper’s surgeon husband did not have the licence of the Society of Apothecaries and would have used the ‘‘tradesman entrance,’’ not the front door, in making his calls.2 Wardroper had had no experience of hospital nursing when she started, but her experience as a mother counted. She had been matron for nine months when Nightingale met her, immediately prior to leaving for the Crimean War in 1854. By 1858 Wardroper had brought a ‘‘new system’’ of nursing into St Thomas’, oriented to patient care. She succeeded in recruiting a better class of women, organizing the position of ward ‘‘sister,’’ increasing staff size, improving the food and ‘‘weeding out inefficients.’’3 R.G. Whitfield, who would become the medical instructor at the school, credited her in 1859 with ‘‘the success of the new organization,’’ i.e., of the improved nursing before the school was opened.4 1 On Wardroper, as well as the obituaries in this volume, see Edwin A. Pratt, Pioneer Women in Victoria’s Reign 125-30. 2 F.F. Cartwright, ‘‘Nightingale and Eagles: The Reform of British Nursing’’ 115. 3 Pratt, Pioneer Women in Victorian’s Reign 126. 4 Letter to Nightingale 7 July 1859, Add Mss 47742 f67. / 885 In 1860, when Nightingale was organizing her training school, Wardroper was her first and only choice as superintendent. Her starting salary as superintendent of the training school was £100, on top of her hospital salary. The two women agreed largely on the basic principles of training, and on the central need of a ‘‘home’’ that the probationers would live in, ‘‘to form their moral life and discipline,’’ as Nightingale’s tribute put it. Wardroper set out the requirements for numbers of nurses and assistants, other staff, etc. She actively collaborated on the mission to extend trained nursing to other hospitals throughout the world. When the heads of other hospitals came to see the Nightingale School, they met with Wardroper (sometimes also with Nightingale). Wardroper visited their hospitals, if in Britain, to assess their needs. Nightingale’s tribute on her death would describe her as ‘‘the pioneer of hospital nursing, the first lay hospital matron, at least of a great public hospital, who was a gentlewoman’’ (see p 387 above). She had great ‘‘power of organization and of administration’’ (see p 389 above). For twenty-seven years she was Nightingale’s eyes, ears, legs and voice on innumerable matters. There clearly was mutual affection and regard between the two women, despite their differences on training. Wardroper’s early letters to Nightingale began with ‘‘Dear Madam,’’ moving to ‘‘My dear Friend,’’ ‘‘Dearest Chief’’ and even ‘‘Dearest and best beloved old friend.’’5 Nightingale’s gifts to her were numerous and considerate (game, flowers, birthday presents, delicacies when she was ill, books). Wardroper was appreciative of Nightingale’s kindness during her daughter ’s illness and upon her mother’s death.6 Nightingale confided in her regarding her own health problems and received sympathetic replies. It seems that Wardroper suffered some kind of breakdown in health (Nightingale feared insanity could result) in 1872. In 1871 she suffered from foot problems and depression, a loss of ‘‘spirits,’’ as she described it, but the ‘‘dark cloud has passed.’’7 Nightingale succeeded 5 Letters 22 August 1880 and 19 December 1888, Add Mss 47733 ff103 and 210. 6 Letter of Laura Wardroper 27 May 1870, Add Mss 45802 f138. 7 Letter 4 May 1871, Add Mss 47731 f312. 886 / Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School in getting her to take a lengthier than usual holiday in 1872, but not the six months Nightingale thought necessary. However, Wardroper did accede to the introduction of a training mistress, the ‘‘home sister ,’’ and eventually agreed to having a secretary and an assistant matron. Her son, Walter, was paid to give her assistance with recordkeeping . On her retirement in 1887, Wardroper lived near her son in East Grinstead, Essex; her salary was continued as a ‘‘retiring allowance,’’ the Nightingale Fund minute book noted. Upon her death in 1892, she...