Founding of the Nightingale Training School

The Nightingale Training School for nurses opened at St Thomas’ Hospital in London — the beginning of modern nurse education, training nurses for the profession.

Funded by the Nightingale Fund, raised to honour her on her return from the Crimea, a school for nurses opened on 9 July 1860 at St Thomas’ Hospital on the Thames in London. Students worked and learned on the wards for a year and lived in a residence under strict rules; its graduates went on to found nursing schools in hospitals across Britain and other countries.

Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing (1859), published the year before, set out the basics — fresh air, clean water, light, quiet — in plain words and was widely read. Nursing was on its way to becoming a profession for trained women.