Changing Faces of St Marylebone

Nightingale will forever be known as “The Lady with the Lamp” and is best known for her work in the Crimean War, where she cut the hospital death rate by enforcing handwashing and cleanliness.

There are however more facets to Florence Nightingale. She was also a pioneer in the discipline of statistics, presenting her analysis of data in the form of graphs and diagrams to make it easier to draw conclusions. She is most famous for her use of the polar area diagram (a highly sophisticated pie chart), also called the Nightingale rose diagram.

Nightingale can also be truly called the founder of professional nursing; in 1860 she established a nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King’s College London. New nurses still take the Nightingale Pledge and the Florence Nightingale medal is the highest international award for a nurse. International Nurses Day is celebrated on 12 May, her birthday.