Actress is 'Irish lady with lamp'

An actress from Northern Ireland with a Hollywood reputation is to star as the Irish Florence Nightingale.

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Bronagh Gallagher plays the lead
role in the drama documentary

Bronagh Gallagher from Londonderry, who appeared in Pulp Fiction, The Commitments and Star Wars Episode 1, has a new challenge.

She is playing the lead role in a drama documentary about Donegal-born nurse Agnes Jones.

Agnes cared for thousands of emigrants who left Irish shores to escape the Famine.

The script for the drama, which is currently being filmed in the north west of Ireland, was written by former BBC journalist Felicity McCall.

"Agnes Jones was the founder of Irish nursing, she was one of the first 12 nurses trained by Florence Nightingale after the Crimean war," she said.

"She is largely forgotten in Ireland because after she trained, she spent her ministry in Liverpool amongst Irish famine emigrants."

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Young actors taking part in the
drama documentary

Agnes Jones helped transform workhouses into safe havens where famine emigrants from Ireland got quality care when they got off the Liverpool boat.

Bronagh Gallagher is delighted to play this little known heroine.

"This woman revolutionised sanitation and workhouse hospitals, yet nobody knows about her," she said.

"She ended up in Liverpool and was there to mother the famine victims who were dumped on Liverpool docks because they were too sick to travel on to the 'new world'".

The drama has given more than 100 young people the chance to fulfil their acting ambitions.

Agnes Jones will be shown in the Foyle Film Festival and will also be broadcast on television later this year.

BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5199640.stm)

Londonderry



?..........Its FREE Derry !!!


;)

Florence Nightingale was asked by William Rathbone to help in setting up accessible healthcare for all of the poor of the city. Florence arranged for Agnes Jones to come to the city and train the nurses. Agnes had to dismiss half of the nursing staff for drunkeness! The old Women's Hospital is named after her now I think.

Wonderful strong women then - that really was girl power.

?..........Its FREE Derry !!!


;)
Rather depends from which side of the wall yer chuckin' yer missiles from, eh?
But then, let's not start that one again! :rolleyes: :)

Agnes Jones, nursing pioneer (1832-1868)

Early life and work

Agnes Jones was born in Cambridge into a wealthy, Evangelical Christian family with a strong military background. It was due to her father’s military role that she spent much of her childhood moving home, from the ‘family seat’ in Fahan, Donegal to Mauritius, to Bonn in Germany and to Dublin. In 1848 she settled in Stratford-upon-Avon for her schooling.

Following her father’s death in 1850, Agnes went back to Donegal to look after her sick mother and younger brother and sister. It was here in Ireland that Agnes got her first experience of ‘nursing’, spending much time looking after the poor and sick people of the Fahan countryside.

From an early age Agnes knew that she wanted to spend her life looking after other people’s well-being, and had flirted with the idea of becoming a Bible missionary and a school governess. It was not until a visit to Germany in 1853 that she decided on becoming a nurse. In Germany, Agnes visited an Institution at Kaiserswerth comprised of schools, orphanages and hospitals, run with a strict Christian moral philosophy. Seven years later, in 1860, Agnes went back to Kaiserswerth to complete a full training programme for working in orphanages, hospitals, and governess training. Once she had completed her training, Agnes was put in charge of a Kaiserswerth boys’ hospital.

On her return to England, Agnes worked as a Biblical missionary and in a Girls’ Dormitory school in London, but still wanted to become a nurse. In 1862, Agnes Jones enrolled in Florence Nightingale’s nurse training school at St. Thomas’ Hospital, for a year’s training programme. Agnes would strike up a long-lasting correspondence with Florence Nightingale, who called Agnes “one of our best pupils”.

source: www.mersey-gateway.org