Florence Nightingale Museum

Attached to St Thomas’s Hospital, this small museum tells the story of feisty war heroine Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), who led a team of nurses to Turkey in 1854 during the Crimean War. There she worked to improve conditions for the soldiers before returning to London to set up a training school for nurses at St Thomas’s in 1859. So popular did she become that baseball-card–style photos of the gentle ‘Lady of the Lamp’ were sold during her lifetime. There is no shortage of revisionist detractors who dismiss her as a ‘canny administrator’ and ‘publicity hound’; Nightingale was, in fact, one of the world’s first modern celebrities. But the fact remains she improved conditions for thousands of soldiers in the field and saved quite a few lives in the process. We can hardly think of a more glorious achievement.