The Editor TLS,

Dear Sir,

Usually I ignore criticisms from the handful of inimical Nightingale commentators. Hence I did not intervene when Mark Bostridge deftly and rather irrelevantly misquoted me as characterising Florence Nightingale as a ‘civilizing imperialist'.[TLS Feb. 18 2005; cf. Smith, Nightingale, pp. 146-7].

The letter about the Florence Nightingale essay in the Oxford DNB from the new editor [TLS, April 8, 2005] raises a more serious matter and requires a response. He says that ‘as published in 2004, four-fifths of the...article is entirely Baly's'. He proceeds, presumably without checking, to foist on me a wholly invented ‘quotation', proclaiming Nightingale's ‘cavalier attitude to infection' complete with a bogus page reference to my book in the context of describing Florence Nightingale's reactions to midwife training proposals in the 1860s.[ Oxford DNB , vol. 40, p.909; Smith, Nightingale , pp. 159-63]. ‘Cavalier' is never an adjective I would apply to Nightingale and the phrase itself is coarse and completely misrepresents my discussion. My actual, more discriminating, argument has been given in the Oxford piece to the late Ms Baly. Lynn McDonald carelessly parades the fabrication in her latest attack. She even manages to misquote it into worse English.[TLS March 18 2005]. Dr Goldman's assertion is false; but I am indebted to him for prompting me to check. I repeat, the words, in whatever form, and the argument attributed to me are not mine. I regret that space precludes me from reproducing both the Oxford and Smith sections in full. Interested scholars with access to large libraries should be able to make the comparison

It should never have become necessary, but I have to declare that I had absolutely nothing to do with the Oxford DNB Nightingale article. I'm therefore the more pleased that Colin Matthew, a magisterial scholar of nineteenth century Britain, and Monica Baly ,whom I never knew, saw fit to draw on my work in writing it. Perhaps Dr Goldman or preferably his governing body will tell us how and when the tainted phrase got into the text: it is out of kilter with the rest of the essay. Baly, who died in 1998, might not have put it there. The historical import of the episode is slight, but a huge amount of trust and goodwill turns on how the Oxford people deal with it.

TLS Letters addicts who are curious about the recent attacks might enjoy comparing the decontextualized snippets, foxy innuendoes and extravagant general assertions about my work with what I actually wrote. They might also begin to wonder about the self-elected censors' cast of mind. They boast exclusive Nightingale expertise, but over the last decade or so they seem to have published more words about a mythical Smith than about Miss Nightingale.

F B Smith

41 Froggatt Street,

Canberra, ACT 2612,

Australia.

April 26 2005.