The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Florence Nightingale, the WW1 Nurse Florence Oppenheimer
August 7, 2014 15:16
By, Doreen Berger
5 min read
ByDoreen Berger, Doreen Berger
As the doyenne of Jewish cookery, Florence Greenberg, reflected in old age: "I don't think there are many people who have been privileged to have had two interesting and rewarding careers – one in nursing and the other cookery."
For Florence had, indeed, two vastly differing careers. Unknown to most people, she had once been known as Nurse Oppenheimer, receiving a citation from none other than Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War during the First World War.
Florence was the daughter of Alexander and Eliza Oppenheimer, who were married on August 1, 1876 at Willis' Rooms, St James', under the auspices of the Bevis Marks congregation. The reason for a Sephardic marriage ceremony lay in her mother's maternal ancestry.
Her mother, Eliza, was the daughter of Sarah and Salomon Pool. Sarah was none other than the daughter of Reverend David Aaron de Sola, the Amsterdam-born minister of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation for more than 30 years. Sarah Pool's's grandmother was Rica, the eldest daughter of the Reverend Haham Meldola, renowned chief rabbi of the congregation, whose family were known to have originated from the city of Toledo.
Salomon Pool came from Rotterdam, had become a naturalised British citizen and went into business as a cattle salesman. Although a member of the German-Polish congregation, he served as an official of Bevis Marks because of his wife's important lineage.
She came to write her weekly column for the JC at the suggestion of her husband, the editor
Florence's father, Alexander Oppenheimer, was born in Holland, made a comfortable living as a cattle salesman, like his father-in-law, and had also become a naturalised British citizen. He was the son of Michel Oppenheimer, born in Bliescastel in Germany, and who had married the widowed Sara, daughter of Nathan Frank, a meat slaughterer, of Heerenberg in the Netherlands. Alexander's grandparents were Marcus Oppenheimer and Sara Levij of Rotterdam.
Florence was born on April 13, 1882 in Islington, north London, into a large family. The eldest child, Michael, had died at a few weeks of age, but by the time that Florence was born she had three elder sisters - and three more sisters and two brothers followed. Strangely, Florence was the only child whose birth was not announced within the pages of the Jewish Chronicle.
The future Nurse Oppenheimer was educated at Lady Holles School and then attended a boarding school for a year at Bork-on-Rhine.
Nothing more was expected of her than that she should be at home to help with the preparation of meals in their busy household. She became honorary secretary of a branch of the Happy Evenings Association for children, but Florence had always harboured an ambition to train as a nurse. At the age of 29 she knew she would soon be too old to be accepted and so one of her brothers had a long talk with her father, who was opposed to young women nursing men.
The talk was successful and Florence started her nursing training at the Royal Sussex Hospital in Brighton in 1911. She left London on July 19, 1915 and travelled by train to Devonport, Plymouth, to join one of the hospital ships leaving for the Middle East, as a member of Queen Alexander's Imperial Nursing Service. A torpedo destroyer accompanied them, and there were frequent lifeboat drills and target practice. There were times when lights had to be extinguished on board at night, the portholes covered and complete silence was enforced.
The conditions were cramped and hot on board, but the young nurses were treated very well and if boredom set in they made themselves useful sewing for the soldiers and sharing sports on deck. Inevitably, friendships developed and Florence, the only Jew on board ship, received a marriage proposal from a very serious Roman Catholic doctor from Newcastle. To let him down lightly, she explained to Dr Brenner that her religion precluded any serious attachment.
She was transferred to the hospital ship, the Alounia, near the Turkish island of Imbros, within hearing of the sounds of war and they started to take casualties. The boat had 1,980 patients with only ten medical staff and there were six patients in a row and two rows deep. She also worked sometimes on the upper deck in the fresh air with 120 beds on each side of the deck.
At last, as Florence confided in her diary, she realised what war really meant.
After some time working at a hospital in Port Said, in Egypt, and then at a military hospital in Cairo, Florence eventually took a short holiday. By 1916 she was stationed back in England at Canterbury Military Hospital, taking charge of Jewish patients attending a special service at the synagogue at Canterbury.
For a time after Canterbury, she was working in a London hospital in charge of an officers' ward, but when she became restless she was transferred to Cairo. There were riots to face and she was in Egypt at the time of the Armistice. Florence signed on for another six months and transferred to Palestine. It was not until December, 1919 that she felt ready to go home.
Soon after her return to England Florence Oppenheimer was introduced to the editor of the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World, Leopold J. Greenberg.
Greenberg, a brilliant editor, was a 58-year-old widower, but despite the disparity in their ages, Florence and Leopold married at the West London Synagogue, Upper Berkeley Street on May 6, 1920.
After a few weeks, he suggested that she should write a cookery column for the Jewish Chronicle, but when she protested that she had no literary ability, Leopold said it really did not matter as she was an excellent cook. In an almost unprecedented contribution run, Florence wrote her weekly column in the paper from 1920 until 1962.
Leopold died in 1931. His successor in the editor's chair at the Jewish Chronicle, J M Rich, aware of the devotion of her readers, asked Florence to write a Jewish cookery book and so the first edition of Florence Greenberg's Cookery Book, the bible of pre-war Anglo-Jewish kitchens, came into existence.
Five thousand copies were published in 1934 and the book sold for three shillings and sixpence. There have been many editions since, some utilising wartime rations; Penguin published a paperback in 1967 and it has been transcribed in Braille. A glossy, updated hardcover edition from the Hamlyn Publishing Group became available in 1980 with colour plates at the price of £6.95. Each recipe was tested by a home economist.
Florence had a special interest in dietetics, during the Second World War lecturing extensively for the Ministry of Food and giving talks to Jewish women on how to make the best use of food during rationing.
She then became a regular broadcaster for the BBC programme On the Kitchen Front, wrote a section on Jewish cookery for a new edition of Mrs Beeton, and wrote extensively for the journal "Newnes Home Management".
She was a founder member of the London Jewish Hospital and when a nurses' home annexe was added to Stepney Green Hospital, she was able to use her experience in the furnishing of the nurses' bedrooms and recreation rooms from the viewpoint of someone who had been a nurse herself. She was an active member of the ladies' aid society of the hospital and during the Second World War worked at a canteen in a busy London terminus on several days each week as a member of the Women's Voluntary Service.
Florence Greenberg died aged 98 at Hammerson House in London on December 4, 1980 and was survived by her daughter and two grandchildren.
When she was 90, she told a reporter that the ingredients for her recipe for longevity were harmonious family relationships, a worthwhile career and never, never to moan.
In a 1955 assessment of her eponymous cookbook, an (anonymous) writer observed that if some of Florence's recipes were thought to be a mite bland, it was because "the nurse in her was afraid of upsetting the patient's tummy." Nevertheless, the same writer noted, the major difference between a Florence Greenberg recipe and that of other cookbooks was simple. "They work."
Doreen Berger is chairman of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain and author of two reference books based on newspaper research in mid-Victorian England.
