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Richard Bates

Research Fellow, History,

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Posts by Richard Bates

Edward Wrench: An Army Doctor in the Crimean War

This blog post is by Sarah Topliss, a volunteer citizen researcher who has in recent months been investigating the Wrench archive held by the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections. The archive contains some 32 boxes of letters describing Wrench’s life in the Crimean War, Indian Rebellion, and work for the Duke of Devonshire …

Where was Florence Nightingale?: Developing Municipal Health Visiting After 1900

This piece by Dr Pamela Dale, honorary fellow at the University of Exeter, looks at the development of health visiting at a municipal level after 1900. This blog is drawn from Pamela’s ongoing research – if you have information that could help her, do get in touch! [Image: Woman Sanitary Inspector examining young girls’ hair, …

Parallel Paths in History: Florence Nightingale and John Smedley Jr

This guest piece is written by Steven Schmidt, a volunteer history researcher with the John Smedley Archive Charitable Trust. [Image: John Smedley’s Hydropathic Institute, Matlock Bank, Derbyshire, c. 1872. Wellcome Collection.] The central Derbyshire parish of Dethick, Lea, and Holloway is located on the eastern side of the Derwent Valley. Relatively thinly populated today, it …

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Painting Florence: Interview with Nurse-Artist Louisa Long

Louisa Long is a mental health nurse trained at the University of Nottingham. She is completing a PhD on improving the care of young adults accessing mental health services while lecturing at the University’s School of Health Sciences. Over the last couple of years, she has been working on a portrait of Florence Nightingale, as …

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Interview with Nicki Credland, Chair of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses

In the latest in our series of interviews with nursing leaders, Dr Jonathan Memel from the project team spoke to Nicki Credland, Chair of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses, which represents intensive care nurses. Nicki discusses about her own career as well as the particular pressures placed on intensive care units during the …

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Article in The Conversation on Nightingale, hand washing, and home working

The coronavirus has put paid, for now, to our exhibition and programme of events that was due to run from March until May. We are hoping to mark Nightingale’s bicentenary on 12 May online in some way — watch this space. In the meantime, Richard from our team has published a piece in The Conversation …

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Dame Yvonne Moores Interview

Dame Yvonne Moores is Chair of the Florence Nightingale Foundation. She is the only person to have been the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) for Wales (1982-1988), Scotland (1988-1992) and England (1992-1999), advising everyone from the Prime Minister to the Secretary of State for Health on nursing matters. She also chaired the World Committee on Nursing …

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2020 Health Humanities Conference – ‘Health and Our Environment’

Some readers may be interested to know about an upcoming one-day conference being held at Nottingham on March 23, co-organised by the two PhD students attached to the Nightingale Comes Home project, Mathilde Vialard and Frances Cadd, along with their colleague from English, Emma Putland. The conference is on the theme of ‘Health and Our …

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Florence Nightingale, Yorkshire, and All That

A couple of event notifications have come our way courtesy of John Bibby, of the University of York: John writes: “Readers of the Nightingale blog may be interested to learn about two upcoming conferences, each with social history themes with focus on the Victorian period and its relevance for today. On February 28th, Radical Statistics …

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Margaret Povey, Nightingale’s Nearest Living Relative – and Nightingale Nurse

Richard and Paul from the project team recently travelled to meet Florence Nightingale’s nearest living relative, Margaret Povey, in a meeting kindly arranged by friend of the project, John Rivers.  Margaret – the granddaughter of Nightingale’s cousin, General Sir Lothian Nicholson – also possesses an original letter from Nightingale to her uncle George Nicholson, which …

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