BLACKWOOD [NÉE LAMBART], LADY ALICIA (1818 - 1913), nurse and philanthropist, was born probably on 29 November 1818 at Eaglehurst, near Ower Green in Hampshire, the daughter of George Frederick Augustus Lambart, Viscount Kilcoursie (1789 - 1828), and Sarah Coppin (d. 1823), the only daughter of J. P. Coppin of Cowley, Oxfordshire. Alicia was baptized in the parish church at Fawley on 13 December 1818. After her eldest brother, Frederick John William, succeeded as eighth earl of Cavan in 1838 Alicia and her brother Oliver George and sisters, Henrietta Augusta and Julia, received a royal patent of precedence giving them the rank of an earl's children.

Alicia Lambart spent her childhood at the Cavan country seats of Eaglehurst in Hampshire and Sharpham Park, near Broomfield in Somerset. Orphaned in 1828, she was probably brought up by relatives and educated at home. On 13 April 1849 she married the Revd James Stevenson Blackwood (d. 1882). Blackwood had attended Trinity College, Dublin, where he qualified as a barrister-at-law in 1835. He undertook studies in divinity and was ordained deacon in the Anglican church in 1847; in 1848 he was made a prebendary of Winchester.

The Blackwoods were prominent members of the Evangelical Alliance founded by Edward Bickersteth, a leading evangelical clergyman and Lord Shaftesbury's private counsellor. They took an active part in London's religious and philanthropic life, travelling regularly from Yorkshire to assemble at the alliance headquarters at Exeter Hall, the major public platform for evangelical religious and social campaigns, and the centre of domestic and overseas missionary activities. From 1846 the Evangelical Alliance organized annual meetings for Reformed protestants from England, Ireland, Scotland, the United States, France, Geneva, and Germany. The Blackwoods attended many of these religious meetings, where they made numerous friends, including two young Swedish women, Ebba and Emma Almroth, whom they met at an Evangelical Alliance conference in Lausanne in early 1856.

The war in the Crimea, the fall of Sevastopol, and news of the calamitous situation following the battle of Inkerman 'deeply moved' the Blackwoods and Lady Alicia was spurred into action (Blackwood, 2). She organized a small volunteer party to travel to Scutari and in early November 1854 Lady Alicia, her young Swedish friends, a maidservant, and her husband travelled overland and then by the La Gange, a French troopship, arriving at Seraglio Point in mid-December.

From the first days in Scutari, Lady Alicia recorded her experiences in a journal which formed the basis of a wartime memoir, A narrative of personal experiences and impressions during a residence on the Bosphorus throughout the Crimean War (1881). In this memoir she related that she presented herself to the authorities as a willing helper, begging to be 'usefully employed' (Blackwood, 49). James Blackwood immediately secured a post as a military chaplain, and when Florence Nightingale was convinced that Lady Alicia was in earnest and willing to work she was asked to take charge of 200 women sheltering in appalling conditions in the foul basements of the great barrack hospital at Scutari. Lady Alicia described the scene as 'a Pandemonium full of cursing and swearing and drunkenness' (Blackwood, 50).

Lady Alicia quickly demonstrated her energy and resourcefulness. Initially she took responsibility for 280 women and infants, many of them the wives, widows, and children of soldiers who had arrived from Varna in wretched condition. While sympathetic to the women's plight, Florence Nightingale regarded them as hindrances to the major task of caring for military casualties. With supplies brought from England, charitable gifts, supplemented with goods bought locally, Lady Alicia set up a women's hospital in a rented house. There, with two 'industrious and respectable' women employed as nurses and laundresses, a resident matron, and Dr Peyton Smith, sent out from Leeds, Lady Alicia began work (Blackwood, 54). Observing the destitute condition of the women, she soon decided to establish a small shop to distribute 'gifts to the women' (ibid., 57) sent from England, and to sell tea, soap, and calico at subsidized prices on two mornings each week. Flannel material and soap were in greatest demand. The women's hospital was supported by private subscriptions. As a result of her appeals in 1855 a charity to aid Lady Alicia's work for soldiers' children was established in England by Lord Kinnaird: the Soldiers' Infant Home was to house 100 children (ibid., 317).

At Scutari, Lady Alicia took charge of a lying-in ward, an invalid hospital, and established a small infants' school with a Sunday school which she supplied with bibles, prayers, and tracts. At the request of Sister Bernadine of the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy, Lady Alicia established a small school for the children of German Jewish families who had fled from Kerch by sea. Mainly artisans, the families were destitute and had taken up temporary residence in Pera, inland from Tophana. With assistance from a 'Mr. C---', a German convert employed by the English Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, she enrolled fifty-six pupils.

By the time peace was proclaimed in Constantinople in March 1856 Lady Alicia recorded that she had 500 women 'more or less' under her charge (Blackwood, 237). Lady Alicia and her chaplain husband worked for fifteen months ministering to the sick and dying. At the end of the war they managed to travel, visiting Balaklava, Inkerman, Chernaya valley, and Cathcart's Hill. They delivered translated bibles and testaments to vanquished Russian soldiers, and travelled to see the khans of Bakhchisaray, the resort of the Karaite Jews in the valley of Jehoshaphat. Lady Alicia recalled that the southern part of the Crimea was reduced to 'one vast cemetery' (Blackwood, 255).

According to Lady Alicia the wartime journal remained untouched until the death in 1880 of Sultan, her favourite horse, acquired in Scutari and transported to England on the Blackwoods' return in July 1856. The horse had remained 'a connecting link between those stirring and deeply interesting times and the present' (Blackwood, 310). Sultan's death prompted Lady Alicia to recount the 'scenes impressed on our memories that can never be effaced and have been since as monitors to check discontent' (Blackwood, 59).

In her Narrative Lady Alicia recounted incidents at the women's hospital, conversations with Florence Nightingale and other prominent helpers, and the difficulties in organization. In addition she graphically described the agonies of men dying on the battlefields from wounds and from infectious disease; in freezing winter temperatures frostbite and exposure were constant enemies. Burials, the silent aftermath of battles, rocky cemeteries, and new memorials are poignantly evoked and yet, occasionally offsetting tragedy, Lady Alicia's lively and informative travelogue is reminiscent of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's eighteenth-century Turkish Letters. Just as Lady Mary had been, Lady Alicia was an acute observer of Turkish women's manners and customs.

In her Narrative she conveyed vivid descriptions and opinions on Turkish women's demeanour and dress, and managed to communicate her interest well enough to receive invitations to visit the local women's domestic quarters where she 'fraternised', receiving coffee, a hookah, and sweetmeats (Blackwood, 85 - 6). She supplied her Narrative with illustrations - pencil sketches of Turkish and Crimean scenery. These were also published separately as an album, Scutari, the Bosphorus, and the Crimea, 24 Sketches (1857). Her wry humour made light of difficulties, and through her writing Lady Alicia emerges as a venturesome individual with a practical streak, kind, earnest, and deeply religious.

After the Crimean War the Blackwoods returned to the Yorkshire parish of Middleton Tyas, where James Blackwood was appointed vicar. There Lady Alicia applied herself to parish and charitable work, notably for the British and Foreign Bible Society. Correspondence with Florence Nightingale continued sporadically until 1866. On the Revd James Blackwood's retirement in 1874 they moved to Boxmoor House, near Bovingdon in Hertfordshire, where they lived quietly. James Blackwood died in 1882 and Lady Alicia lived on at Boxmoor House continuing her charitable and religious work. She wrote another book, Six in the Fold, and One: Narratives Drawn from Life, published by the Religious Tract Society in 1892.

Lady Alicia Blackwood died at Boxmoor House on 30 July 1913 at the age of ninety-four. As the Blackwoods were childless Lady Alicia left the bulk of her estate to her sister-in-law, the Hon. Elizabeth Lambart, and provided legacies to her sister, Lady Julia Bouwens, her nieces and nephews, and close friends.

Author: Suzanne L. G. Rickard

Sources

A. Blackwood, A narrative of personal experiences and impressions during a residence on the Bosphorus throughout the Crimean War (1881)

The Times (1 Aug 1913)

Hertfordshire, Hemel Hempstead Gazette and West Herts Advertiser (2 Aug 1913)

letter, F. Nightingale to Sir H. Verney, 1859?, Wellcome L., MS 8998/14

m. cert.

d. cert.

census returns, 1881

CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1913)

parish register, Fawley, Hampshire, 13 Dec 1818 [baptism]

C. Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale, 1820 - 1910 (1950), 180 - 81, 190, 225

F. B. Smith, Florence Nightingale: reputation and power (1982), 43

A calendar of the letters of Florence Nightingale, ed. S. Goldie (1977) [microfiche]

Allibone, Dict.

Burke, Peerage (1845)

Debrett's Peerage (1995)

Crockford (1865)

Crockford (1882)

L. James, 1854 - 1856 Crimea: the war with Russia from contemporary photographs (1981)

Archives

Wellcome L., Florence Nightingale MSS

Other info

Wealth at death £11,870 9s. 4d.: probate, 2 Sept 1913, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

© Oxford University Press 2004 - 13

Lady Alicia Blackwood (1818 - 1913): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50817