Nightingales - Florence and Her Family by Gillian Gill

For its residents had been among the very first to benefit from the caring side of this extraordinary woman who, single-handedly, transformed the way we care for the sick.

As a child, growing up on the Embley Park estate near Romsey, she would help the poor and sick living nearby.

And they never forgot it.

Now a new book about Florence has just been published, focusing not only on the acclaimed nurse herself but her sprawling, often bickering, family.

Many biographies have been previously written about her, each attempting to understand this complex product of Victorian society.

Yet in order for us to realise the magnitude of her achievements, we have to put them in the context of what life was like for women of her class during the mid-19th century.

According to social expectations of the time Florence's life should have been spent marrying young, marrying well, being a 'good wife' and having children.

If childbirth didn't kill her she would have sat around in ornate dresses with huge hooped petticoats, frittering away her days in mind-numbing boredom, punctuated by people paying visits and the obligatory endless embroidery.

After Florence Nightingale was born, fittingly in Florence, Italy in May 1820, her childhood was privileged and loving.

The next year her family returned to Britain and she grew up dividing her time between her father's two estates at Embley Park and in Derbyshire.

Embley Park, bought when Florence was five, was chosen for its proximity to other relatives living in Hampshire, being near enough to the coast for swimming in the Solent and, crucially, offering her father William Nightingale excellent shooting.

It was at this time that her budding intelligence soon became apparent and her life began to diverge from the norm.

In a highly unconventional move, herfather took it upon himself to educate not only "Flo" but her elder sister Parthenope.

The girls would happily sit for hours on end in his study declining Greek nouns and reading political philosophy.

By the age of nine, Florence was also already an ardent Bible reader, developing a faith which would later have a crucial influence on her life.

William adored his younger daughter, later showering her with Parisian frocks, opera tickets and holidays abroad.

In 1839 she came out in society as a debutante, with the Nightingales taking an entire floor of the Carlton Hotel in London's Regent Street to mark the event.

Here it was Florence's charisma more than her looks which brought her attention, despite the experience proving daunting for one whose "courage fell into her shoes".

But there were cynical motives behind her launch into society.

Put frankly, Florence's family needed her to marry well because there was no male heir to inherit her father's fortune.

It was clear that, in the event of his death, her mother and sister would be turning to her to provide financial support.

But Florence had other goals in mind than domesticity.

Deeply ambitious, she believed God wanted her to devote herself to nursing, writing passionately in her diary that women had just as much right to work and make a difference as men.

Society disagreed.

They may have had a female ruler in the form of Queen Victoria but, otherwise, well-bred ladies couldn't vote, enter university or earn a living.

Yet, against all the odds and opposition, Florence triumphed through sheer determination.

She turned down offers of marriage from her first cousin Henry Nicholson and close family friend Monckton Milnes (much to her parents' fury), opting for religiously-imposed celibacy instead.

By 1845 she was secretly planning to gain experience working at a Salisbury hospital, in itself a highly unusual decision given that hospitals were filthy places, middle class women simply didn't visit.

Forced by a family outcry to give up her fledgling career before it had even started, it was 1852 before her father gave her his permission and a £500 pa allowance which allowed her to take over the running of an Institution for Ill Gentlewomen in Harley Street.

Within six months the excellence of her reputation saw her also helping to treat patients at the Middlesex Hospital.

When Britain went to war against Russia in 1854 many casualties died not of bullet wounds but in agony of cholera which swept through camps, such as the one in Varna, Bulgaria.

Prompted by horrific reports of suffering in The Times, Florence secured the permission of the head of the Army Medical Board to take a small band of volunteers to Turkey.

The press, in desperate need of a hero, immediately fell in love with her.

"There is not one of England's proudest and purest daughters who at this moment stands on so high a pinnacle as Florence Nightingale," gushed the Examiner.

Once in Scutari's stinking hospitals though, she must have wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew.

Raw sewage trickled over the floors as patients lying dying in their own waste, being devoured by lice and with disease-ridden rats scampering over them.

Yet, within months Florence, had improved the soldiers' plight.

No case was too gruesome for her to tackle and the measures she introduced saved thousands of lives.

And her nightly rounds, during which she offered words of comfort to her patients, saw her dubbed 'the Lady with the Lamp'.

One man wrote home: "What a comfort it was to see her pass...We lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell and lay our heads on the pillow again content."

Queen Victoria was so impressed she sent Florence a brooch and England wanted to welcome her back at the end of the war in a blaze of publicity.

But instead, Florence slid into the country under an assumed name and had a nervous breakdown brought on by exhaustion.

Bed-ridden for two decades, depressed and probably suffering from brucellosis, she wrote endlessly of the positive impact "clean water, fresh food, good latrines, suitable clothes and housing" had on patients.

She finally died in obscurity at the age of 90 and is buried in the little churchyard at East Wellow, next to her parents.

Fittingly in view of her modesty, the monument stone merely reads "F. N. Born May 1820. Died 13 August 1910."

Nightingales - Florence and Her Family, by Gillian Gill is published by Hodder and Stoughton, priced £20.