Helen Rappaport (2007) No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War.

Reviewed by Dr Jane Brooks

"Nothing could have prepared Lady Blackwood, daughter of a viscount, who had grown up at the family country seats in Hampshire and Somerset, for the indescribable pandemonium of the dark, airless cellars at Scutari.  It was a Hogarthian hellhole of degeneracy, dirt and disease, of swearing and cursing". (pg. 134)

No Place for Ladies is a truly ambitious text, chronically as it does the Crimean War through the lives of the women who followed the soldiers.  Rappaport transports us from the wintry morning when excited troops, resplendent in red waved goodbye to London in the presence of Victoria, to the return of  Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale and a roll call of some of the dead. The pages are as one would expect replete with the horrors and perhaps more strangely humours of war, but the angle is distinctly female; the washing of uniforms, the giving birth, ladies astride their horses and  of course the tending of the sick.

The British soldier who wished to marry was required to seek permission from his commanding officer.  If this was granted the wife was considered ‘on the strength' and if there was room, allowed to reside in the barracks with her husband.  According to Rappaport only about 4-6% were ever given permission, and so many female camp followers were not there officially, many were deserted and resorted to prostitution. Even for those women who were married, the life of a soldier's wife was one of privation, lack of privacy and the benefits minimal.  Moreover when the men went to war only 6% were allowed to follow with the regiment, thus many found their own way to the Crimea.  The situation for officers wives mirrored the different circumstances in which the officers themselves lived as compared to the ordinary soldier, it was nonetheless also not without its privations.  Rappaport transfixes the reader with the antics of Fanny Duberly, the wife of Captain Duberly, paymaster of the 8^th Hussars; a young woman more concerned about the horses than ordinary men and women or the regiment.  It is impossible throughout to know whether to admire her tenacity and resolve or despise her haughty narcissism.

Meanwhile, Fanny was intent on raising her own public profile, going everywhere and doing everything in her inimitable style, constantly riding up to Cathcart's Hill [the observation point] to watch the bombardment of Sevastopol and then seeing the wounded and mangled bodies carried off. (pg. 200)

The nursing aspect of the book is dealt with in detail and well positioned within the text.  The reader is directed to this female work as part of the general expectations of the role women should play in war. Rappaport deals sensitively with the many personalities and egos within the nursing force at the Crimea; her respect of and interest in Mary Seacole are palpable.  Nevertheless, she does not ignore the contributions made by the many other women, including Florence Nightingale and her attention to detail so acute that the reader can sometimes feel overwhelmed.  The book is in the end a superb story, critically researched and should be of value to historians of women, nursing and war and enjoyed by all who read it.