Engaging the Victorian Reading Public: Nightingale and the Madras Famine of 1876
Journal: Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks
Year: 2010

Florence Nightingale declared with confidence in 1877 that English people would generously give to alleviate the suffering of Indian people during the famine then current in Madras—if only they knew how bad that famine was. Only one year later she changed her tune. Published in the liberal journal, The Nineteenth Century, Nightingale's 1878 article, "The People of India," contains her boldest statement of disappointment about government and public inaction in the face of the mass numbers of dead