A £2 coin Brilliant Uncirculated Coin Pack has been produce by Royal Mint UK to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Florence Nightingale death as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of her Notes on Nursing falls in 2010. During the Crimean War Florence Nightingale took a team of nurses to Constantinople to care for the ill and critically injured troops and won the undying respect of the nation. The Informative presentation folder recounting her remarkable life and achievements are strictly limited to 25,000 worldwide.
The obverse of the coin bear the effigy of the Queen by the Rank-Broadley coins bear the inscription ELIZABETH II DEI GRA REG FID DEF. On the reverse show an image of an outstretched hand, with a second and third hand as if taking a pulse, surrounded by the inscription 1820 - FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE - 1910. The edge inscription: 150 YEARS OF NURSING.
Florence Nightingale, (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence during the Crimean War for her pioneering work in nursing, and was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night to tend injured soldiers. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.
During the Crimean campaign, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp", deriving from a phrase in a report in The Times:
She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Park Lane. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire.
Specifications:
Denomination: £2
Alloy: Inner - Cupro-nickel, Outer - Nickel-brass
Weight: 12.00g
Diameter: 28.40mm
Designer: (Reverse) Gordon Summers
Designer: (Obverse) Ian Rank-Broadley FRBS
Edge: Inscription 150 Years of Nursing
Source: Royal Mint UK, Wikipedia.
