ABSTRACT
The British women who nursed in the military hospitals during the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856 provide a prosopographical illustration of the state of nursing reform and nursing practice in the 1850s. After the war, Nightingale named five nurses whom she considered her mainstays. This would help fuel the myth of Nightingale and her educated, trained and refined' lady nurses moving into the hospitals and, almost overnight, revolutionizing nursing. Apart from Nightingale, only two of the 52 secular lady nurses, Nightingale and Jane Shaw Stewart, had some months of hospital nursing experience, and after the war, Shaw Stewart proved an utter disaster. The religious Sisters had both clinical experience and religious discipline, which made them exceptionally valuable. The Bermondsey nuns and Anglican Sisters understood the need for obedience and co-operation, were interested primarily in the nursing rather than adventure or giving religious instruction. They had the necessary administrative and financial skills developed from running their convents.
