First United States Postmaster Benjamin Franklin
<h4><a href="https://vmps.omeka.net/exhibits/show/postal-service-gallery/postal-service-gallery">Return to Postal Service</a></h4>
Franklin was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia by the British Crown Post in 1737. Newspaper publishers often served as postmasters, which helped them to gather and distribute news. Postmasters decided which newspapers could travel free in the mail — or in the mail at all.
Postmaster General Elliott Benger added to Franklin’s duties by making him comptroller, with financial oversight for nearby Post Offices. Franklin lobbied the British to succeed Benger when his health failed and, with Virginia’s William Hunter, was named joint postmaster general for the Crown on August 10, 1753.
Franklin surveyed post roads and Post Offices, introduced a simple accounting method for postmasters, and had riders carry mail both night and day. He encouraged postmasters to establish the penny post where letters not called for at the Post Office were delivered for a penny. Remembering his experience with the Gazette, Franklin mandated delivery of all newspapers for a small fee. His efforts contributed to the Crown’s first North American profit in 1760.
In 1757, while serving as joint postmaster general, Franklin went to London to represent Pennsylvania’s government. In 1763, back in the colonies, he traveled 1,600 miles surveying post roads and Post Offices from Virginia to New England. In 1764, Franklin returned to London, where he represented the interests of several colonial governments. In 1774, judged too sympathetic to the colonies, he was dismissed as joint postmaster general.
Back on American soil in 1775, Franklin served as a member of the Second Continental Congress, which appointed him Postmaster General on July 26 of that year. With an annual salary of $1,000 and $340 for a secretary and comptroller, Franklin was responsible for all Post Offices from Massachusetts to Georgia and had authority to hire postmasters as necessary.
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin, first Postmaster General of the United States (and Continental Congress). <br /><br />Source: USPS. (n.d.). Benjamin franklin first postmaster general. Retrieved Oct 22, 2012, from <a href="https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/pmg-franklin.pdf">http://1.usa.gov/QwarWG</a>
Metropolitan Museum of Art
ca. 1778
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Link: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benjamin_Franklin_by_Joseph-Siffred_Duplessis.jpg">Benjamin Franklin (via Wikipedia)</a>
Medium: Painting
English
Figures
Postal
Historic
Florence Nightingale, Nurse
<h4><a href="https://vmps.omeka.net/exhibits/show/public-health-healthcare-galle/public-health-healthcare-galle">Return to Public Health and Healthcare</a></h4>
<p><strong><em>Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.</em></strong></p>
<p><em>Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</em></p>
Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. The history of modern nursing started in 1849, when Florence Nightingale began her first formal nursing training at the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul, in Alexandria, Egypt. After further trainings in Germany and in France, she voluntarily served as Superintendent at the Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness in London. The knowledge and skills Nightingale gained from these experiences equipped her to take the challenges in tending to the British military victims when the Crimean War broke out on 1854. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.
Library of Congress
https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3a00000/3a09000/3a09100/3a09175r.jpg
Library of Congress
1910
Library of Congress
Source: Zaf Udin. (2011. June 11). 25 Famous Nurses. Pulseuniform. Retrieved Oct 15, 2012 from <a href="http://bit.ly/JtoMfP">http://bit.ly/JtoMfP</a>
Link: <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004672058/">Library of Congress</a>
Medium: Photomechanical Print
English
Figures
Florence Nightingale, Nursing, Crimean War, London, Women
Historic