Mary Francis Bridgeman

(1813 – 11 February 1888) was a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic religious congregation of women, founded in Ireland by Catherine McAuley and a pioneer nurse during the Crimean War of 1854-1856.

[3] The Sisters wrote to the War Office on 18 October 1854 stating, 'Attendance on the sick is, as you are aware, part of our Institute; and sad experience among the poor has convinced us that, even with the advantage of medical attendance, many valuable lives are lost for want of careful nursing.

'[4] Their offer was accepted and Bridgeman and a party of 11 or 12 Sisters departed from London on 2 December 1854, travelling via Paris and Marseilles, where they boarded a ship for Constantinople in a second wave of Irish nurses after Mary Clare Moore with the intention of assisting Florence Nightingale at Scutari Hospital.

[6] Apparently, in its haste to send the second wave of Irish nurses out to the Crimea the War Office and Sidney Herbert had omitted to inform Nightingale that the Sisters were en route.

Having already had experience of nursing cholera sufferers in their native Ireland the Sisters began treating the sick as well as tending the wounded and dying from the year-long Siege of Sebastopol, spending their last six months in the General and Hut hospitals at the frontline.

[7] This only succeeded in exacerbating the tension which already existed between Nightingale and Bridgeman[9] which persisted throughout the rest of the military campaign,[10] with peace being brokered by various hospital doctors and chaplains resulting in the Sisters being permitted to continue with their nursing.

As war in the Crimea was coming to an end Nightingale visited Bridgeman and her Sisters at the Crimean hospitals at the frontline to invite them join her at Scutari, but they declined to go.

It has been suggested that the system of management and nursing introduced by Bridgeman and her Sisters in the Crimea found their way uncredited into Nightingale's report to the War Office.

[2][14] When in April 1856 Nightingale regained control of Balaclava General Hospital Bridgeman immediately resigned, giving as a reason that she and her Sisters were no longer required owing to the falling numbers of sick and wounded in addition to the imminent declaration of peace.