Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of AmericaYoung, Charles Sumner
History
Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America
Young, Charles Sumner
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912
Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 and lived to be ninety years of
age.
Clara Barton lived her long life without marrying; Florence Nightingale
likewise lived her long life without marrying.
Clara Barton is known as the “Angel of the Battlefield”; Florence
Nightingale, as the “Lady of the Lamp.”
Although they were strangers to each other, they are known as, indeed,
sisters.
Clara Barton had the distinction of being born on Christmas and passing
away on Easter; Florence Nightingale had the distinction of having for a
name the name of a stately city and a sweet-voiced bird.
Clara Barton as a nurse had her first experience nursing a brother by
the name of David; Florence Nightingale as a nurse had her first
experience caring for a pet shepherd dog by the name of “Cap.”
Clara Barton on an army wagon seated with a mule driver left Washington
to go to the battlefields of the Civil War; Florence Nightingale on
board of a vessel with 38 other nurses, sailed from England to go to the
hospitals at Scutari, Turkey, in the Crimean War.
Clara Barton continually “followed the cannon” from the camps of the
soldiers on to the “firing line”; Florence Nightingale lived at Scutari,
but on one occasion inspected the camps of the soldiers at Balaclava
within hearing of the cannon.
Clara Barton had for a pet, presented to her, a white Arabian horse and
known as “Baba”; Florence Nightingale had for a pet, presented to her, a
Russian hound, and known as “Miss Nightingale’s Crimean Dog.”
Clara Barton wore the Iron Cross of Prussia, representing Germany, and
presented to her by Emperor William I; Florence Nightingale wore a
brooch bearing a St. George’s Cross, in red enamel on a white field
representing England, and presented to her by Queen Victoria.
Clara Barton received from the Sultan of Turkey a “Diploma,” and
“Decorations”; Florence Nightingale received from the Sultan of Turkey a
costly diamond necklace.
The United States Government refused to appropriate one thousand dollars
for a memorial tablet to Clara Barton in the Red Cross Building; England
conferred on Florence Nightingale the dignity of a “Lady of Grace of the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem,” and later the still higher “Order of
Merit,” founded by King Edward VII himself, in 1902.
The people of the United States contributed to a fund for Clara
Barton—well, perhaps, this is a secret and should not be told here; the
people of England contributed to a fund for Florence Nightingale,
through the Jenny Lind concerts and in other ways, a fund amounting to
$250,000, the fund since used to establish the “Nightingale Home at St.
Thomas’ Hospital”—a Training School for Nurses.
By her request, Clara Barton was buried near her home at Oxford,
Massachusetts; by her request, Florence Nightingale was buried near her
home at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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