The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh's Lady Superintendent of Nurses, Angelique Lucille Pringle was a regular correspondent of Florence Nightingale in the late 19th Century. This friendship resulted in a series of motivational letters addressed to the Infirmary's nursing staff written to inspire them to keep up their good work!
Angelique Lucille Pringle, LHSA Photographic Collection
One of the treasures of LHSA's Archive collection is a bound volume of letters written by Florence Nightingale collected by Miss Pringle. We have recently made the first letter in this volume available to view online using http://www.issuu.com/. This website provides online 'page-turner' technology, as shown below.
The letter, dated 6 December 1878 begins:
'My dear friends: our good nurses
Often I do wish that I could go amongst you all, at least twice in the year. I feel as if I were always with you in the work, and indeed I am always with you in prayer'.
Florence Nightingale, LHSA Object Collection, P4
We have a small selection of other LHSA records available to consult via www.issuu.com/lhsa
Great article in the Evening News about Florence's letter. I have my Mum's "pelican badge" from her time at RIE, which she loved so much :-) Jo
ReplyDeleteHi Jo.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment - Florence's letters are certainly an important part of the Archive, it was great the Evening News picked up on the story about them being digitised. The nursing badges are fantastic too; take a look at the Unsung Heroes project blog so that you can keep up to date with its progress: http://nursingbadges.wordpress.com/
Laura, Assistant Archivist
Thanks very much for your comments, glad you're enjoying the blog (although the credit for this blog post goes to Rosie who sadly no longer works with us!). We'll keep you updated about our Florence Nightingale collections.
ReplyDeleteLaura, Assistant Archivist