Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/121

105 The Dark Period in Nursing 105 Two women were born in the closing years of the eighteenth century who, in their early middle life, became closely associated with the revival of nursing under the Fliedners. They were EHzabeth Fry, the English Friend, and Amalie Sieveking of Hamburg, Germany. Mrs. Fry, beautiful, earnest, intensely religious, and an eloquent, impressive speaker, was a leader in prison reform. Through her work among the women in Newgate prison she became widely known as a philanthropist, and formed close relations with similar leaders of humane thought elsewhere. Among these was Amalie Sieveking, a single woman of independent means, whose altruism had led her into volunteer hospital service during an epidemic of cholera. She had for a time thought of devoting herself entirely to nursing, but circumstances prevented this, and her life was spent in general philanthropy. She had a gift for wise counsel, and was directly concerned in this way in the development of Kaisers werth. Mrs. Fry had also a deep interest in Kaiserswerth, for her work with prisoners had made her long for a service of visiting nursing for the poor, and she finally founded a society for this purpose, but died before it was well advanced. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw