AllMovie

Not long after their successful collaboration on From Shop Girl to Duchess, star Elizabeth Risdonand director Maurice Elvey re-teamed for the three-reel historical drama Florence Nightingale. The story begins during Florence's childhood, where she is shown bandaging a broken doll -- an unsubtle portent for all that is to come. Spurning a variety of suitors, Florence elects to devote her life to medicine and in 1854 heads to the battlefields of the Crimean War. Appalled by the conditions at the camp hospitals, Florence lobbies for the creation of a nursing corps, only to be met with derision from the powers-that-be. Eventually, of course, Florence perseveres, and the International Red Cross comes into being. The final scene shows a 90-year-old Florence Nightingale receiving the Order of Merit from King Edward VII.