Letter to Jane Senior
1874-12-07

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35 South St.
Park Lane W.
Dec 7/74
My dear Mrs. Senior
I am so concerned at what I heard
yesterday: that you had resigned Office:
that I cannot help writing a word of sorrow.
No personal grief has ever affected me more:
(tho' I have had many & bitter: indeed, my whole
life has been one of sorrows.). But I look
upon your resignation as a national misfortune.
No one could have done what you would
have done: What you indeed have done during
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this brief space: against growing-up, grown-
up female pauperism: a worse evil than
a Cholera, or a War, or Popes, or
Slavery, or Indian Zemindals: or than
any other evil we know. Consternation is my state. How
many will remain paupers whom you would have saved.
You were arrayed almost singlehanded, a
noble Army of one, against this evil.
And who will take your place? Who will redeem
our generation?
The outcry of the enemy shows what a club
your gentle Hercules arm has wielded:
and would you leave off till you had
become Apollo Victor with his bow?
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I only hope that ill health is not the cause:
or only a temporary cause: of this great
disaster.
At all events, the great principle which you
have initiated (without writing!! Or platform-
-ing about it!!) namely, that women must
'inspect' women, [& how well they do it!] cannot be again
laid aside.
Yet: Rather the resignation of the greatest Cabinet
that ever was than yours!
I never thank you for your Report, for it
was un-thank-able for. I am so miserable
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that I can only say further how much
I am, dear Mrs. Senior,
your faithful & grateful servt.
Florence Nightingale
N.B.
By a strange coincidence, (if there are such things,) I receieved
while I was writing this a letter from an old friend
who was out with me in the Crimea & whom I have
not seen for 17 or 18 years, asking for advise &
Workhouse work: Miss Jebbett (you may recognize the
name, as having been with he sister & brother-in-law,
Mr. Paget, M.P., washed from a rock at Filey by a wave into
the sea. Mr. & Mrs. Paget were drowned: she was saved). Her idea seems to be: but she asks for advice: to do something
for Workhouse girls out of place: who, she fancies, "cannot
return to the Workhouse". [I thought the mischief was that they
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did return to the Workhouse].
No one could give her such advice as you:
but I hardly like to ask you:
unless indeed you might know of some opening
which a person was wanted to give.
She has come to live in London.
F.N.
Did you see an Article in Saturday's "Illustrated
News" on "Little Prisoners" (little paupers)?
I pray God that your successor may be
one-tenth of you.
F.N.