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Phoebe Pember

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Nurse

The Resume

    (August 18, 1823-March 4, 1913)
    Born in Charleston, South Carolina
    Birth name was Phoebe Yates Levy
    Born into the elite Levy-Yates family of Charleston, South Carolina
    Married Thomas Pember (1856)
    Served in the American Civil War
    Chief matron and administrator of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia (1862-65)
    Memoirs would later be published in book form as 'A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond,' in 1879

Why she might be annoying:

    Her family home is now a Bed & Breakfast.
    She was accused of exaggerating her role and importance at the Chimbirazo Hospital.
    Her Jewish background has led some to mistakenly assume that she served with the North during the Civil War.
    She is overshadowed by her Northern counterpart, Clara Barton.
    Her US postage stamp was likely included on the USPS's Civil War stamp sheet solely as a Southern counter to Barton's stamp.
    She acted like a snob towards lower-class orderlies, calling them 'inefficient and uneducated women, hardly above the laboring classes [lacking the manners of] the better class of people.'
    She also looked down on the female relatives of her patients who came to visit whom she called 'an excellent source for public amusement' in her writings.
    This snobbery extended to reading the private letters from the mothers and wives and scrutinizing them as 'irresistibly ludicrous ... queer mixtures of ignorance, bad grammar, worse spelling, and simple feeling.'

Why she might not be annoying:

    She was chief matron for one of the five divisions for - at the time - the largest military hospital in the world.
    She assumed informal responsibility/direct care over some 15,000 patients over the course of the war.
    She belonged to a prominent Jewish family in the South but married a Gentile of modest means.
    She later lost her husband to tuberculosis (her years spent caring for him during his convalescence in the South gave her familiarity with nursing however).
    She exhibited a steely resolve in handling war-time supply shortages, once threatening a pilfering staffer with a gun she kept with her at all times.
    Some of her complaints about the orderlies under her were perfectly legitimate (one of them was discharged for excessive drinking).
    She was known for providing a comforting and warm presence to the wounded - and in some cases dying - soldiers (during a time when nursing was still a predominately male profession).
    She remained with her patients long after the fall of Richmond, leaving only after the facility was taken over by Federal authorities.
    She wrote: 'In the midst of suffering and death, hoping with those almost beyond hope in this world; praying by the bedside of the lonely and heart stricken; closing the eyes of the boys hardly old enough to realize man’s sorrows, much less suffer man’s fierce hate, a woman must soar beyond the conventional modesty considered correct under different circumstances.'
    If she had served with the Union, she would probably have been hailed as the American Florence Nightingale.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 96 Votes: 53.12% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 136 Votes: 74.26% Annoying