First published 2004 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gourlay, Jharna
Florence Nightingale and the health of the Raj. - (The
history of medicine in context)
1.Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910 - Contributions in
public health of India 2.East Indians - Health and hygiene
- History - 19th century 3.Medical policy - India - History
- 19th century 4.Sanitation - India - History - 19th
century 5.India - Social conditions - 19th century 6.India
- History - 19th century
I.Title
362 .1092
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gourlay, Jharna, 1934-
Florence Nightingale and the health of the Raj / Jharna Gourlay.
p. cm. -- (The history of medicine in context)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-3364-0 (alk. paper)
1. Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910. 2. Nurses--Great Britain--Biography.
3. Women social reformers--Great Britain--Biography. 4. Public health--
India--History--19th century. 5. India--Relations--Great Britain. 6. Great
Britain--Relations--India. I. Title. II. Series.
RT37.N5G68 2003
610.73092--dc2l
[B]
2003045331
ISBN 9780754633648 (hbk)
The History of Medicine in Context
Typeset in Sabon by Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
Some years ago, when working for the BBC External Services, I was asked to produce a feature on Florence Nightingale. It was during my subsequent mini-research that I became aware of her involvement with India and my curiosity was roused. Many other commitments and interests meant that at that time further research was impossible, but I promised myself to return to it eventually. This book evolved from that initial curiosity and is the result of four years research in Britain and India. It is a tribute to a woman much praised, more maligned, but hardly understood.
The life of Florence Nightingale is a much-trodden territory, but her involvement with India and Indians is relatively unknown and unresearched. Nightingale never went to India but instigated and inspired various sanitary and social reforms in India. She was involved with army sanitation, public health, famine, irrigation, land tenancy reform, nursing, female medical education and finally village sanitation. For almost forty years of her life, from 1857 to 1896, she worked and aspired for India.
The aim of this book is to present in some detail this aspect of her life and work, to show how she progressed from the narrow sphere of army sanitation to the socio-economic condition of the whole of India. I have tried to place this development in the context of events in India during that time, and to trace her political involvement and her growing awareness of Indian problems; how from an imperialist position she gradually changed into someone who not only approved but worked for the Indianisation of the administration. This is also the story of a woman in nineteenth-century patriarchal Britain who worked relentlessly to influ ence Government and public opinion over policy matters of value to her.
The book is based on primary sources in archives in Britain and India, focusing in particular on her letters and correspondence. I have made considerable use of her articles and pamphlets as well so that her story can be told directly through her own words. I have also referred to other secondary works principally to provide information on the necessary historical context to understand the events that moved her, and the situa tion in which she tried to work for India. In this matter, Sir Edward Cooks pioneering work The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) is undoubtedly the most authentic source material. Unlike others, he did discuss Nightin gales Indian work, but largely from an official and British perspective. Moreover, as he covered the whole of Nightingales life and work, he focused mainly on events in Britain and understandably he did not have space to consider her Indian activities in their proper historical context or devote much time to her association with various Indian leaders or Indian organisations. F.B. Smiths Florence Nightingale Reputation and Power (1982) has one chapter on her Indian activities that is similarly limited to Britain but provides only a brief and one-sided assessment of her work that fails to do justice to the materials available. More recently, a number of well-researched books have been published on imperial health policies in nineteenth-century India. Unfortunately, most of these either totally ignore Nightingales contributions or only mention her name in passing.
This book does not claim to be an exhaustive study of Nightingales correspondence about India. Biographers of Nightingale know only too well how impossible that task would be considering the enormous volume of letters, notes and personal papers she left behind, and there is enough material for several aspiring PhD students. One major difficulty of dealing with Nightingales letters is that she quite often wrote the same letter to more than one person and made several drafts of it and saved all, sometimes including a copy of the original. But they are not necessarily indexed in the same volume in the British Library. Sometimes she had put her thoughts in notes before drafting a letter and sometimes she left notes of her discussions with other people, not always mentioning who the person was. I have quoted them verbatim, remaining faithful to her punctuation as far as possible.
