London, UK - Florence Nightingale is to be commemorated alongside saints, kings and poets — becoming the first commoner to have a chapel in Westminster Abbey named after her.
The tribute to the “Lady with the Lamp” and heroine of the Crimean War is one of the highest honours in the Anglican Church. The Nurses’ Chapel, which is already dedicated to the memory of more than 3,000 nurses from Britain and the Commonwealth who died in the Second World War, will be renamed the Nightingale Chapel with a simple prayer of dedication on May 12, the anniversary of the nurse’s birth. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, will preach at a service later to commemorate the life of Nightingale, who died in 1910, aged 90.
More than 3,300 people are buried in Westminster Abbey and its cloisters and there are more than 600 monuments and memorials, but the dedication will be the first time that a chapel is named after an individual who is not a saint or member of the Royal Family.
Nightingale is also the only nurse and one of relatively few women to be commemorated at the Abbey.
The 16th-century chapel is near the Abbey’s High Altar, and overlooks the tombs of Edward the Confessor, Richard II and Henry V.
After a bomb shattered the windows in the Blitz, the chapel was renamed the Nurses’ Memorial Chapel in 1950 and given a stained-glass window of a nurse, St Luke and the Virgin Mary — and featuring a Nightingale-style lamp on a red cross.
The Florence Nightingale Foundation had asked if an image of the nurse could be placed in the Abbey. “But we were told we could have a whole chapel dedicated instead, which was fantastic”, the charity told The Times.
Nightingale has already been named an “exemplary Christian”, and since 1997 has had an official commemorative day in the Anglican calendar on the day she died, August 13. Famous for her rounds in the military hospitals of the Crimea, she laid the foundations for nursing training, military planning and infection control.
In 1910 The Times reported that the offer of a burial in the Abbey was declined by relatives, and she was buried near her parents at St Margaret’s Church in East Wellow, Hampshire.
Dr John Hall, the Dean of Westminster said: “This is the centenary of her death and she is remembered as one of the great iconic figures of nursing. But she has also been given her own day in the Christian calendar and is remembered for her sanctity of life and Christian commitment. It is entirely appropriate, then, for her to have a chapel named in her honour.”
An image dimmed by cliche
Behind the story, by Elizabeth Robb
The lessons set out by Florence Nightingale are even more relevant than a century ago. She was adamant that nurses, not doctors, should be the servants of medicine, surgery and hygiene. Her influence has given the profession the credibility it has long needed, so that nurses can now advance to degree and higher degree level, become trust directors and chief executives and, more importantly, work alongside senior doctors as equals.
But she worked on a much bigger canvas, encompassing reform of the Armed Forces, public health, the environment, housing and poverty. Yes, she did walk the wards with her lamp. But can we finally dispense with the cloying image and see her as she is?
Elizabeth Robb is chief executive of the Florence Nightingale Foundation, which provides scholarships to nurses and midwives.