No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

`Fascinating ... the author has made excellent use of [the diaries
and letters]. Rappaport weaves their stories into the text without
sentimentality; the facts speak for themselves.'

`No Place for Ladies tells the haunting stories of these mostly
forgotten women, drawing the reader into the lives of extreme hardship,
devotion and devastation. Helen Rappaport paints a vivid picture of these
women ... flung into the midst of the brutality of war.'

All children learn at school the story of Florence Nightingale - the Lady with the Lamp - who heroically tended the sick during the Crimean War. But she was not the only woman in the Crimea. It is usually assumed that women did not become involved in international conflict until the First World War. But in "No Place For Ladies", respected historian Helen Rappaport proves otherwise: numerous women were actively involved in the Crimean war in a variety of ways. Four wives would be chosen to accompany each regiment of 100 men, enduring the verminridden troop ships and then left to fend for themselves in the barren Crimean terrain, before combing the battlefields in search of their men. Yet the suffering of the soldiers' wives left behind was more terrible. At home, vast numbers of women - including Queen Victoria herself - knitted socks to cheer the soldiers stranded in freezing Sevastopol. Florence Nightingale had a band of unruly, often hard-drinking orderlies to control. Rejected by Nightingale, maverick black nurse Mary Seacole set up her own dispensary in the Crimea. And then there were the lady battlefield tourists, watching engagements from a safe distance in between picnics and yacht trips. This rich, colourful and fascinating picture of very different women at war is based on hundreds of their rare and often unpublished accounts.

Helen Rappaport is a historian and author of An Encyclopedia of Women and Social Reformers and Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. She has presented historical documentaries for Channel 4 and BBC Woman's Hour.