How did Louisa Ingle go from being a hard-working nurse at London's Guy's Hospital to despised outcast, shunned and condemned for manslaughter? Caught in a bitter dispute between the hospital's modernisers and traditionalists, she was a scapegoat for the warring factions when the conflict tumbled out of control in the summer of 1880. This is the story of that struggle and her downfall, and how she learned of the conspiracy that entangled her and drove her into deep despair at the rank injustice of her betrayal. But it is also the inspiring true story of a group of pioneering women as they stepped out of Florence Nightingale's shadow to establish the value of nursing as a profession for independent women.