London: Tea Time in Wonderland

On the right side of Westminster Bridge is St Thomas Hospital, which shelters the excellent Florence Nightingale museum, recently reopened after costly renovations: interactive, rich in anecdotes, it plays with a variety of supports to fascinate visitors of all ages (even the audioguide is disguised as a stethoscope!).

I usually hate reading snall lines, prefering to scan through explanatory pannels. This is one of the first time I have so much pleasure reading every single detail. My daugter ran around, to ticking off key object on her kids’ trail, clicking on computer pannels, looking in the special windows at her level. She actually is the one who refused to leave!

Do go and learn about this formidable nurse who defied Victorian proprieties. Although from an upper class family, she will react as a feminist, refuse to marry and preferred to follow her vocation. She leaves for the Crimea wars and will fight to improve the terrible army hospital conditions there. Once back to England, the public supports her with generous donations: she opens the very first nurse school. What a recolution! Until then, nurses were middle class, learnt on a day-to-day basis from experience and were generally badly judged. She will never stop pushing for improvement in hospitals – whether civil or military – and even orphanages and workhouses. A prioneer for her time and truly inspiring still for ours.

Florence Nightingale Museum
2 Lambeth Palace Road
London SE1

£5.80/adult, £4.80 per child 5+
Pssst: why not rest in the nearby garden or try the Topolsky Gallery too, a 10mn walk from there?

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