Our Trip to the Florence Nightingale Museum!

This week, we were so excited to visit the Florence Nightingale Museum.

In school we have been learning all about her early life, time in the Crimea and her legacy. We have also compared her work to that of Mary Seacole, and have more recently learned about Edith Cavell and the bravery that she showed during her life.

On Monday, we travelled south of the river to the Florence Nightingale Museum which you can find at St Thomas’ Hospital, opposite the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. When we arrived, we were met by Florence herself! We spent some time taking off our coats and yellow jackets, as the museum was only open to us this day! We were super lucky!

We went into the museum and sat down in front of Florence, as she began to tell us all about her life. She asked us some questions such as when she was born which we all knew… 1820, of course! She told us all about her early life, growing up with her sister, Parthenope who she called ‘Pop’. Some of us really impressed Florence as we could actually pronounce Parthenope properly! She reminded us of the fact that her father was so passionate about her learning and always encouraged her to read. We found out that Florence’s sister even called her a book worm, which we didn’t think was very nice!

Some of us got to act out certain scenes from Florence’s life, as we took on the role of her father, mother and sister, as she told us that she wanted to be a nurse. As you’ll know from our assembly, they were not pleased! However, she was eventually allowed to have three months of nurse training in Germany and was eventually asked by Sidney Herbert, the Minister of War, to introduce female nurses into the Scutari Hospital during the Crimean War. It was here that Florence made such an impact. We knew lots of this detail from our history lessons and continued to impress Florence. As we arrived at Scutari, we were all given roles! Some of us were on rat duty, some of us had to bake fresh bread, some were cleaning, sweeping and mopping and one of us had to lift the dead horse from the well! We finally helped to make the hospital clean, making sure it was much safer for the soldiers. They were no longer having to lie on the blood-stained floor, surrounded by creatures.

After this experience, Florence sent us off on a scavenger hunt around the museum. We had to find so many things! We found her lamp, dresses, medals and even her pet owl! Our teacher isn’t a huge fan of taxidermy so had to avoid this part of the museum! Us on the other hand, we loved it! We had the chance to dress up in lots of different costumes and outfits, from Florence’s dresses, to soldiers and nurses that we see today.

After our hunt around the museum, we came back to hear about Florence’s legacy, which we know is what she is remembered for. She told us about her important writing, such as Notes on Nurses which is still used today. We also focused on the uniform that Florence had her nurses wear, and how we still the influence that this had on today’s uniforms. Nurses will wear hats, similar to the bonnets worn by Florence and her nurses, they wear a badge (which is now sewn into the material) or lanyard, like the white sash, embellished with the words “Scutari Hospital”.

We had such a fantastic day, and we ended our visit to the museum by serenading Florence Nightingale with our wonderful songs from our assembly! This was another chance for us to show off all of our learning, which we are really proud of.

Finally, we went to see the Mary Seacole statue outside of the hospital and had our pictures taken here! We didn’t sing our Mary Seacole song this time though (although we did as we spotted it on our way into the museum!).

We would like to say a huge thank you to the lovely parent volunteers that came with us, we had a great time and hope that you did too!

What was your favourite part of the trip?