Saturday, July 21, 2007

More 24ths

At the Age of 24...

Dame Agatha Christie 1890-1976

Her first marriage, an unhappy one, was in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks, and divorced in 1928.

During World War I she worked at a hospital and then a pharmacy, a job that influenced her work: many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison. (See also cyanide, ricin, and thallium.)



Florence Nighingale 1820-1910

Image:Florence Nightingale 1920 reproduction.jpg

In December 1844, in response to a pauper's death in a workhouse infirmary in London that became a public scandal, she became the leading advocate for improved medical care in the infirmaries and immediately engaged the support of Charles Villiers, then president of the Poor Law Board. This led to her active role in the reform of the Poor Laws, extending far beyond the provision of medical care. She was later instrumental in mentoring and then sending Agnes Elizabeth Jones and other Nightingale Probationers to Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary.



Dorothy Parker 1893-1967

In 1917, she met and married a Wall Street broker, Edwin Pond Parker II, but they were separated by his army service in World War I. ...

After her limited schooling, she earned money by playing piano at a dancing school, among other things. She first sold a poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1917, and some months later, she was hired as an editorial assistant for another Condé Nast magazine, Vogue. She moved to Vanity Fair as drama critic and staff writer following two years at Vogue.

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