Damn, Girl- Florence Nightingale, Lady With the Lamp

You've probably heard of Florence Nightingale, at least in passing, she basically invented modern nursing after all. But, heavens above, what an achievement that is. Nightingale was one of the first to insist on cleanliness and sterilization, meticulous record keeping, and giving patients nutritious food. During the Crimean War she cut the mortality rate of her hospital by 2/3rds, an amazing achievement, especially considering that the hospital was literally situated on top of a cesspool.

Florence was born into an aristocratic family, and at a young age showed a penchant for taking care of those in need. Deeply religious, in her teens Florence told her parents that God had shown her her destiny, and that her destiny was to be a nurse, and to help the sick (she's kinda like the medical Joan of Arc). Her parents were less than thrilled about this. They expected their daughter to marry an aristocrat and carry on the proud family tradition of being wealthy and marrying well, not work at what was considered a menial task. Nevertheless, Florence persisted, and she was able to receive nurses training.

After completing her training, Florence worked for some time in local British hospitals. Then the Crimean War broke out. Soldiers were dying en masse, and they were mostly dying from poor living and hospital conditions. Florence needed to do something about that. Luckily, she was friends with Sidney Herbert, the secretary of state for war. In a case of great minds thinking alike, she sent him a letter requesting to be sent to Crimea with a group of female nurses, and he sent her a letter asking the exact same thing. On November 5, 1854 Florence arrived in Scutari, Turkey.

Florence likened the Barrack Hospital in Scutari to the Kingdom of Hell. I mentioned before that the hospital was located on a cesspool. The cesspool poisoned the water and air. Soldiers were poorly attended, lying in their own urine and feces, and the hospital was severely overcrowded. Upon arriving in her living quarters, Florence found the body of a dead Russian soldier abandoned to the flies. The hospital was filthy, and reeked of death. This was, as one might imagine, completely unacceptable to Florence, and so she set to work.

Florence attacked the hospital mercilessly. She enlisted some of the more hearty patients to scrub the hospital from top to bottom, and recruited the soldier's wives to wash the clothing and linens the hospital needed to function. She insisted that medical instruments be sterilized, and that patients' wounds be cleaned, as well as the general bathing of the patient.

While all that may seem like a no-brainer to us today, it was not the case in Florence's time. From the 1500's to the mid 1800's hospitals were more a place to die than a place to get well. Filthy conditions were normal. Germs had yet to be discovered, so wounds went uncleaned, and medical personnel didn't wash their hands. Florence changed that.

But not only did Florence insist on cleanliness and sanitation, she also saw to it that soldiers received assistance in writing home to their families, established a library to stimulate minds, and insisted on around the clock care. She herself was known for wandering through the wards of sick at night to check on her patients, it was for this that she received the epithet 'Lady with the lamp'.

Eventually, the Crimean War came to end, and Florence returned to England. But she didn't leave empty handed. She contracted brucellosis, or Crimean Fever, a disease that would leave her home bound and bed ridden for much of the rest of her life.

Florence came back home to find herself a national hero, a development which both baffled and unnerved her. This fame was, however, to allow her to further her work in revolutionizing both nursing and hospital administration. She was granted a tete-a-tete with Queen Victoria, a conversation that resulted in the entire army health system being overhauled, as well as the position of minister of health being created. She received several hundreds of pounds, all of which she put into creating her own nursing school in St. Thomas Hospital.

Once back in England, she still had to dodge her family's demands that she marry Stubborn as ever, Florence refused on the grounds that she was deathly ill. Sub-sequentially, two female relatives, first an aunt and then a cousin moved in with Florence to care for her. Florence established a firm attachment with both of these women, in one letter saying that she and her aunt were 'like two lovers'.

Now, if while reading this you have a little voice in your head that's screaming 'GAY', that voice is completely justified in that argument. Not only did Florence describe her relationship with her aunt as being like two lovers, but she also spoke of a female cousin, saying "I have never loved but one person with a passion in my life, and that was her." Florence never married, and rebuffed marriage proposal from no less than four men. She seemed to have preferred the company of women over all, and was also known to have said, 'I have lived and slept in the same beds as English Countesses, and Prussian farm women. No woman has excited passions among women more than I have.' And while we will never be sure* if Florence was a bi or homosexual, it isn't an unfair assumption to make.

During her years after Crimea Florence not only established her own nursing school, but she also published the definitive guide to nursing, and provided valued statistics and mathematical formulas for calculating and prediction mortality rates. She remained an expert on public health, and was frequently consulted by the British government for ways to improve healthcare.

There's no arguing it, Florence revolutionized healthcare. She established procedures for modern nursing, and she elevated a once despised profession to one of the most valued professions today. She is honored to this day as being a true visionary and pioneer.


*Unless, of course, you manage to contact and interview her ghost. If you do manage such a feat, please contact me. I have much interest in gaining details of the past from those beyond the grave.

Sources
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Biography
Encyclopedia Britannica
Owlcation
Autostraddle

Loud and Proud-Origin of LGBT Pride Parade

I think I may have mentioned it before, but in case you haven't picked up on it, I'm gay. And unless you've been nestled under a rock, you're probably aware that June is LGBT Pride Month. It's the month of rainbow colored everything, and the month where the community gets together to celebrate the fact that, despite thousands of years of systematic oppression, we're still here. It's a month to celebrate the many advances we've made in the civil rights departments, and a month to remember our dead-- the many, many gay and bisexual men that died in the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, the victims of the Pulse shooting in Orlando exactly a year ago yesterday, (June 12, 2016, for those who are unaware.) as well as the many, many LGBT people who die from hate related violence each year all around the world.

The first NY Pride in 1970

And while today's Pride Parades are a (generally) upbeat festival of love and rainbows, the first pride parade in 1970 was in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, an event that could not be described as upbeat or festive.

The Stonewall Inn in New York City was one of the few establishments in the late 60s that catered to (or even allowed) LGBT people. At the time, it was illegal to serve alcohol to homosexuals. It was also illegal for men to be dancing together, and for women to be wearing less than three pieces of feminine clothing. Stonewall Inn was a place for LGBT people to gather, and they paid the police to look the other way. On June 28, 1969 the police stopped looking the other way.

Marsha P. Johnson

On that day New York's 'finest' raided the inn, arresting every patron. The arrest turned into a full blown riot when Marsha P. Johnson, an African American drag queen from New Jersey, threw a shot-glass at the wall and shouted 'I got my civil rights!'. Another woman who was also being arrested asked those standing by if they were going to do anything. Soon the crowd was throwing things at the police, and broke into a riot that would last for six days.

This riot was the turning point for the LGBT community. Their passive resistance tactics weren't working, so a group of prominent activists decided to hold a march one year from the Stonewall riots to commemorate the event, and to remind the world that homosexuals existed.

This first march wasn't really much of a parade, it was a serious political protest. The corresponding marches in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were much the same. As time went on, the parades grew to be more festive, until the 80s.

London Pride, 1977

Now this may come as a shock (by which I mean it should be no shock at all), the 80s were hard on the LGBT community. Thousands of gay and bisexual men died from a disease that the US government didn't start to take seriously until it was too late. Pride was a solemn occasion, and the numbers of participants dwindled. Pride was part of a desperate attempt to remind American politicians that LGBT people were still there, and that they were dying in droves.

To this day, a large part of Pride is still protest. There is a more festive atmosphere, but politics is always at the core, and, unless there is some major world wide change in store, it most likely always will be.

Sources
History.com
Mashable
Washington Post

CNN has some excellent pictures of some of the first Pride Parades here.

Damn, Girl-Tarenorerer, the Amazon of Van Diemen's Land

Tarenorerer, also known as Walyer, was an aboriginal freedom fighter who refused to take shit from anyone. She fought everyone who crossed her, but she mostly fought the white settlers, whalers, and sealers that were enslaving and murdering her people. She so thoroughly terrorized Tasmanians of the 1830s that she was the subject of a huge manhunt (or womanhunt), and George Arthur, Lieutenant governor of the area, remarked that she and her band of warriors were one of the biggest dangers in Tasmania.

1800s Tasmania (Van Diemen's land) was not a safe place for anyone, but especially not for aboriginal people. Whalers in the Bass Strait were known for kidnapping women and children, and tribes fought with white settlers over land. As might be imagined, things weren't going well for the aborigines. It was into this environment that Tarenorerer was born.

Tarenorerer was only a teenager when whalers stole her from her tribe, the Tomeginee. She was held as a slave by them for several years. Conditions were already harsh for aboriginal captives, but for Tarenorerer conditions were much worse. The men who enslaved her would beat, rape, and torture their women to force them into submission, but Tarenorerer refused to submit. her defiance made her captors angrier, which in turn caused them to be crueler to her.

Around 1828 Tarenorerer escaped. With rage in her heart, and a spear in hand, she gathered local men and women around her, and started attacking white settlers. She taught her warriors how to use firearms, and how to use guerrilla warfare to effectively defend against the settlers' tactics. She instructed her people to kill livestock and, in battle, would taunt the white men, telling them to come be speared by her. She was the biggest menace in the neighborhood.

Enter George Arthur. Arthur was a local official, and religious devotee determined to Christianize and make peace with the locals. He was searching for an effective way to make peace with the aborigines, but part of his duties as lieutenant governor of the area meant keeping the peace and protecting white settlers first, so when Tarenorerer and her warriors came on the scene, he went after her.

Arthur chased Tarenorerer for two years, and it was he that gave her the epitaph 'Amazon of Van Diemen's Land'. With a price on her head, Tarenorerer fled, but was again captured, this time by sealers, who took her and two of her sisters to Bird Island to catch seals and (you'll never guess it) birds.

As you might imagine, Tarenorerer was none too pleased with this arrangement. She killed a man trying to escape, but in the process her identity was discovered, and she was arrested. She was carried off to prison, and died of influenza not long after.

Today she is remembered as a brave fighter who embodied the cause of the aboriginal fight for freedom. There are no official memorials to her, but she is still held up as an example for young aboriginal people, who are still fighting the injustices perpetrated by the Australian government.

Updated May 14, 2021. Thanks to Russell Jeffrey for pointing out errors!

Sources
Walyer
Tarenorerer
Australian Women's Register