The Florence Nightingale museum has been abandoned

The Florence Nightingale Museum is unwell. Just as the government announced that Nightingale hospitals were being ‘reactivated’ to cope with the surge in coronavirus cases, the museum’s Director David Green also had something important to say. To prevent the museum becoming financially insolvent, their galleries are closing indefinitely. Any attempt to reopen in the coming months would just be ‘prolonging the inevitable’.

I hope the Prime Minister is aware of this irony. He’s certainly keen to highlight the Lady with the Lamp’s legacy. The museum is housed at St Thomas’ Hospital directly over the river from Westminster, and on the bicentenary of Florence Nightingale’s birth her image was projected in lights across the Houses of Parliament. On International Nurses Day, Johnson said her spirit ‘lies in the remarkable women and men she continues to inspire today,’ calling the Covid-19 nurses ‘today’s Nightingales’. He even claims to own a Florence Nightingale facemask.