Lady Alicia Blackwood

Who was Lady Alicia Blackwood?

Lady Alicia Blackwood née Lambart, the daughter of George Frederick Augustus Lambart, Viscount Kilcoursie and Sarah Coppin, was an English painter and nurse, married to the Rev. James Stevenson Blackwood.

As she recounts in A Narrative of Personal Experiences & Impressions during a Residence on the Bosphorus throughout the Crimean War, Lady Alicia Blackwood and her husband "were deeply moved to go out" after hearing of "the battle of Inkerman, that terribly hard-fought struggle". Dr. Blackwood obtained a chaplaincy to the forces; Lady Alicia and two young women friends accompanied him, determined to find some way to help. Lady Alicia applied to Florence Nightingale at Scutari in December 1854. Nightingale's opinion of ladies who came out to assist the hospitals was generally low, as is shown in their first conversation, related by Lady Alicia:

I applied to Miss Nightingale to know where I could be most usefully employed. Possibly at this long distance of time she may forget that particular interview, but I do not; for the reply she gave me, or rather the question she put to me in reply, after a few seconds of silence, with a peculiar expression of countenance, made an indelible impression.