Emmy Rappe (1835-1896)

Emmy Carolina Rappe is the best-known Swedish descendant of the Coley–Vachell line in the world of modern professions. A baroness of the house Rappe (no. 287), she stands in the same Vachell–Leijoncrona–Rappe descent as Thorborg: the line that runs from Françoise Vachell at Coley Park, via Christoffer Leijoncrona and Hedvig Leijoncrona, into the Swedish baronial Rappe family. Born on 14 February 1835 at Strömsrum in Ålems parish, Kalmar län, she was the daughter of Baron Adolf Fredrik Rappe and Ulrika Catharina Wilhelmina Hammarskjöld.

In the mid-1860s the newly founded Swedish Red Cross sought to establish a modern nursing school. Through the women's rights activist Sophie Adlersparre and an agreement with Florence Nightingale, Emmy Rappe was selected, sent to London, and trained at St Thomas' Hospital under Nightingale's system. Returning to Sweden in 1867, she became head nurse at the new Akademiska sjukhuset in Uppsala and principal of the Red Cross nursing school there – the first secular professional training course for nurses in the country.

Over the following decade she worked to raise the status and competence of nurses, insisting on both medical knowledge and high moral standards, and encouraging solidarity within the profession. Later she served as matron at Uppsala's hospital for the insane and as an inspector and adviser within the Red Cross. Her letters to Florence Nightingale, published as God bless you, my dear Miss Nightingale: Letters from Emmy Carolina Rappe to Florence Nightingale 1867–1870, give a vivid picture of early Swedish hospital life and of a noblewoman consciously placing her inherited standing at the service of a new profession. To the present Lord of Coley she is a more distant collateral kinswoman in the same Rappe branch of the Coley–Vachell line.

Further Reading:

• Stina Nicklasson, "Emmy C. Rappe," Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (urn:sbl:7552).
• "Emmy Carolina Rappe," Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon (skbl.se).
• B. Johansson (ed.), God bless you, my dear Miss Nightingale: Letters from Emmy Carolina Rappe to Florence Nightingale 1867–1870 (Stockholm, 1977).