No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War

This monograph  explores the large extend and variety of ways in which British women were actively involved in the Crimean War (1853-1856), as soldiers wives, sutlers, nurses  and battlefield tourists. Four wives of British soldiers would be chosen to accompany each regiment of 100 men, enduring the vermin-ridden troop ships and then left to fend for themselves in the barren Crimean terrain. Like the soldiers they were not taken care for in the East by the British army. Their situation was characterized by hunger, cold, sickness and epedemics. Upper-class women like Florence Nightingale tried to help by voluntary nursing and welfare. Officers wives joined these women as lady battlefield tourists, watching engagements from a safe distance in between picnics and yacht trips. They tended to ignore the suffering of soldiers and soldiers wives.