The old system in pauper infirmaries was to allow the patients to be “nursed” by old inmates of the workhouse. Among those to whom the care of the sick was confided were “worn-out old thieves, worn-out old drunkards,” and worse. Mr. W. Rathbone, of Liverpool, strongly urged on the guardians of that place to do away with this wretched system, and to substitute in the place of these ignorant, and often vicious, women a staff of trained paid nurses. He generously undertook to defray the whole cost of the new scheme for three years, by which time he believed the improvement effected would be so great that no one would for a moment dream of going back to the old plan. It was to the post of superintendent of the band of trained nurses that Agnes Jones was called in the spring of 1865.

It was no light task for a young woman of thirty-three. She had under her about 50 nurses, 150 pauper “scourers,” and from 1220 to 1350 patients. The winters of 1865 and 1866 will long be remembered as the terrible period of the cotton famine in Lancashire. The workhouse infirmary at Liverpool was not only full, but overflowing; a number of patients often arrived when every bed was full. Then the gentle authority of Sister Agnes, as she was called, had to be exercised to induce the wild, rough patients to make way for one another. Sometimes she had to persuade them to let her put the beds together and place three or even four in two beds. The children had to be packed together, some at the head and some at the foot of the bed. She speaks of them as “nests of children,” and mentions that forty under twelve were sent in one day. This over-filling of the workhouse was of course no ordinary occurrence, and was due to the exceptional distress in Lancashire at that time. The number of deaths that took place, for the same reason, was unusually large. Sister Agnes speaks in one of her letters of seven deaths having occurred between Sunday night and Tuesday morning.

The dreadful melancholy of the place bore upon her with terrible weight. There was not only the depressing thought that most of the inmates were there in consequence of their own wickedness or folly, but added to this the patients were isolated from friends and relatives whose visits do so much to cheer an ordinary hospital. There were patients with delirium tremens wandering about the wards in their shirts; there were little children, some not more than seven, steeped in every kind of vice and infamy. “I sometimes wonder,” she wrote, in a moment of despair, “if there is a worse place on earth than Liverpool, and I am sure its workhouse is burdened with a large proportion of its vilest.”

Some of the best and most deeply-rooted instincts of human nature seemed to turn into cruelty and gall in this terrible place. One of the difficulties of the nurses was to prevent the mothers of the babies, who were still at the breast, from fighting and stealing one another’s food. They had nothing to do but nurse their babies, and they would hardly do that. The noise, quarrelling, and dirt prevailing in their neighbourhood was a constant source of trouble and anxiety. Another trouble was the mixture among the patients of criminal cases, necessitating the presence of policemen constantly on the premises. The ex-pauper women, too, whom Sister Agnes was endeavouring to train as assistant nurses, were a great anxiety. One morning, after they had been paid their wages, five arrived at the hospital tipsy; after some months of constant effort and constant disappointment, the attempt to train these women was given up. Besides the strain on nerves, temper, and spirit arising from all these causes, the physical work of Agnes Jones’s post was no light matter. Her day began at 5.30 A.M. and ended after 11; added to this, if there was any case about which she was specially anxious, or any nurse about whose competence she did not feel fully assured, she would be up two or three times in the night to satisfy herself that all was going well. Her nurses were devoted to her, and, as a rule, gave her no anxiety or discomfort which could be avoided. Her only distress on their account arose from a severe outbreak of fever and small-pox among them, which was a source of much painful anxiety to her. Miss Nightingale said of her that “she had a greater power of carrying her followers with her than any woman (or man) I ever knew.” “Her influence with her nurses was unbounded. They would have died for her.”

All witnesses concur in speaking of her wonderful personal influence and the effect it produced. The infirmary began to show the results of her presence within a month of her arrival. In the three years she spent there, she completely changed the whole place. At first the police, to whose presence reference has already been made, were astonished that it was safe for a number of young women to be about in the men’s wards, for they well knew what a rough lot some of the patients were; but “in less than three years she had reduced one of the most disorderly hospital populations in the world to something like Christian discipline, such as the police themselves wondered at. She had led, so as to be of one mind and one heart with her, upwards of fifty nurses and probationers.... She had converted a vestry to the conviction of the economy as well as the humanity of nursing pauper sick by trained nurses.... She had converted the Poor Law Board to the same view, and she had disarmed all opposition, all sectarian zealotism; so that Roman Catholic and Unitarian, High Church and Low Church, all literally rose up and called her blessed.”

The manner of her death has been already referred to. It was in unison with her unselfish, devoted life. She died on the 19th February 1868, and her body was committed to the earth of her beloved Ireland, at Fahan, on Lough Swilly, the home of her early years.

XI
CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË

In the quiet Yorkshire village of Haworth, on the bleak moorland hillside above Keighley, were born two of the greatest imaginative writers of the present century, Charlotte and Emily Brontë. The wonderful gifts of the Brontë family, the grief and tragedy that overshadowed their lives, and their early deaths, will always cast about their story a peculiarly touching interest. Their father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, was of Irish birth. He was born in the County Down, of a Protestant family—one that had migrated from the south to the north of Ireland. His character was that which we are more accustomed to associate with Scotland than with Ireland. Resolute, stern, independent, and self-denying, he had the virtues of an old Covenanter rather than the facile graces which so often distinguish those of Celtic blood. His father was a farmer, but Patrick Brontë had no desire to live by agricultural industry. At sixteen years of age he separated himself from his family and opened a school. What amount of success he had in this undertaking does not appear, but it is evident that he had a distinct object in view, namely, to obtain money enough to complete his own education; in this he was successful, for after nine years’ labour in instructing others, he entered as a student in St. John’s College, Cambridge, remained there four years, obtained the B.A. degree of the University, and was ordained as a clergyman of the Church of England. He kept up no intercourse with his family, and showed no trace of his Irish blood, either in speech or character. He loved and married Miss Branwell, of Penzance, a lady of much sweetness and refinement. Their six children were destined, through the writings of two of them, to be known wherever the English language is spoken, all over the world. After holding livings in Essex and at Thornton, in Yorkshire, Mr. Brontë was appointed to the Rectory of Haworth, which is now so often visited on account of its association with the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Mrs. Brontë’s six children were born in rapid succession, and her naturally delicate constitution was further tried by the constant labour and anxiety involved in providing, on very limited means, for the wants of the little brood. Mrs. Gaskell, in her Life of Charlotte Brontë, appears to imply that, more than is even usually the case, the weight of family cares and anxieties fell upon the mother rather than the father. “Mr. Brontë,” she says, “was, of course, much engaged in his study, and besides, he was not naturally fond of children, and felt their frequent appearance upon the scene as a drag both on his wife’s strength and as an interruption to the comfort of the household.” One feels disposed to comment on this by saying that children ought never to be born if either of their parents inclines to regard them “as an interruption to the comfort of the household.” To give life and grudge it at the same time is not an attractive combination of qualities. Though not much helped by her husband, Mrs. Brontë was, however, not alone in her domestic cares and duties; the eldest of the “interruptions to the comfort of the household,” Maria, was a child of wonderfully precocious intellect and heart. Her remarkable character was described in after years by her sister Charlotte as the Helen Burns of Jane Eyre. In her, her mother found a sympathising companion and a helper in her domestic cares. The time was rapidly approaching when the mother’s place in the household would be vacant, and when many of its duties and responsibilities would be discharged by Maria.

The little Brontës were from their birth unlike other children. The room dedicated to their use was not, even in their babyhood, called their nursery; it was their “study.” Little Maria at seven years old would shut herself up in this study with the newspaper, and be able to converse with her father on all the public events of the day, and instruct the other children as to current politics, and upon the characters of the chief personages of the political world.