Lock of Florence Nightingale’s hair sells for over $4K at auction

By Douglas Whitbread via SWNS

A lock of Florence Nightingale’s hair has sold for over $4,520 at auction.

The snipping of the famed nurse’s mane - which was removed in 1883 when she was 63 - was snapped up by a private collector.

Nightingale was dubbed "the lady with the lamp" following her work treating soldiers during the Crimean War in the 1850s amid terrible conditions.

She was born in Florence, Italy, after which she was named, to a wealthy British family but later devoted herself to helping the sick before becoming a nurse.

Nightingale studied in Germany and France before returning to England in 1853, where she became the superintendent of the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London.

But the next year she led a team of 38 nurses to the Scutari hospital, in Turkey, where they cared for British soldiers injured during the war with the Russian Empire.

The group were shocked by the horrific conditions they found at the sanatorium - with Nightingale insisting that a new hygiene regime was followed.

This included the washing of hands by those treating patients, which helped to prevent the spread of diseases.

During this period, she used a lamp to visit soldiers' beds, which led to newspapers at the time giving her the well-known nickname.

The lock of hair reached a sale price of $3,606 at Tennants Auctioneers.

It was sold alongside an example of her signature on a clipped piece of paper, a miniature copy of The Book of Job inscribed "Henry Verney from Miss Nightingale Embley April 1862", and a leather-bound copy of the 'Order for the Burial of the Dead' published for her funeral in 1910.

The items have descended through the Verney family from Sir Harry Verney (1801-1894), who married Florence Nightingale's sister Frances Parthenope in 1858.

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