A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

Children's Hospital, London,
March 1892.

Soon after I last wrote I was sent down to the Out-Patients' Department—quite a different kind of work, and I shouldn't like it for long, but it was interesting for a time.

The numbers vary a great deal. From fifty to a hundred children may be brought up in one day, and many of them require small dressings to be attended to. Then, on two afternoons in the week, the surgeons do small operations; and sometimes there are half-a-dozen children all recovering from anæsthetics at the same time, and all requiring to be carefully watched.

There is a dear old Sister in charge, and one afternoon a week we go out together to visit any special hip cases that are being treated in their own homes, after having been in-patients here. Such slums we sometimes have to go to; and yet it is wonderful how nicely the poor mothers keep these children when they are just shown the right way. We have one jolly little chap, who has been for two months in an extension apparatus rigged up on a big perambulator, with the weight hanging over the handle. He has improved so much that they will soon wheel him up in his bed-carriage, and I think the doctor will then sign his release from the extension.

Some of the nurses had rather a joke the other day—a joke which had good results for the rest of us. There is a confectioner's shop near here which we largely patronise, and these girls who were on night duty were hungry as usual, and they went into this shop for tea and scones before going to bed. While they were there, our secretary superintendent came in; and afterwards Mrs. —— (who is quite a friend of ours) told the nurses that, seeing them there, he asked her whether many nurses were customers of hers; and she, pretending not to know him, said, "Oh yes, sir; but we gets more nurses from the Children's Hospital than from any of the other hospitals round here. You see, they feeds them that badly there!" I believe he went straight back to the hospital and made inquiries about our food, for not many days after we had bacon for breakfast; and now there is always something besides the bread put on the table, and we find it a vast improvement.

Another thing has happened which has helped us considerably. A new nurse has joined, who is a cousin of the senior surgeon. She is an awfully nice girl, but does not look very strong, and after a week or two she retired to bed with a strained back (not very bad). Then her cousin visited her, and then he visited the committee; and it seems they had no idea we had to carry all the big lotion bottles up from the dispensary, and the heavy blocks of ice from the basement, and that we had to drag down the great bags of soiled linen to the basement and then along a lengthy passage—no joke on the doctor's day, when all the twenty cots have clean sheets and counterpanes, &c. So now the porters do these things for us, and we mournfully regret that we were not clever enough to arrange for one of our number to strain her back at the beginning of our training, instead of nearly at the end; but without a senior surgeon for a cousin it might not have paid! Nurse is nearly well again now, and she has asked me to spend part of my next free Sunday with her at the house of this same senior surgeon. I shall be horribly shy, but I can't well refuse.

My brother H. has come to live in town now, and it is very nice for me. He is reading for an exam., and has rooms in Barnard's Inn—such a funny old rookery near Holborn, and not far from here. He stands me a good dinner about once a week, when I am off in the evening; and in return I darn his socks for him, try to take him to church on Sundays, and report his doings in my letters home, so that he need only send them occasional post-cards!

While I was in the Out-Patient Department I was supposed to have my Sundays free, unless an "extra" was especially wanted anywhere; and one Saturday evening I was preparing to go away for the night, when a message came that the night sister was not well, and Matron (who was going away till Monday) wished me to go on duty for her for the two nights. That was about 6 P.M.; so I went to lie down for a bit, and at 10 P.M. the home sister gave me the report and the hospital keys, and I took charge, feeling rather important, but also rather a fraud, as several of the charge nurses then on night duty had been here for many years, and knew far more than I did. However, we got on very well together, and I rather enjoyed running round to the different wards, and helping with the bad cases.

There was one especially sad case—a girl of ten who had been frightened by rats when left locked up in a house. She had chorea so badly that we had to let her sleep on a mattress on the floor, and it was most difficult to keep any clothes on her, or to feed her. Poor child, her temperature gradually rose till it reached 107.8 before she died, a few days later. The doctors said it was the worst case they had ever seen, and I hope I may never see another case die of chorea.

On the Monday morning I went to bed at 5 A.M., and had to be on duty in the Out-Patient Department at 8 A.M. We had a heavy day; and when we finished at 5.30 P.M., you can imagine my disgust at receiving a message from Matron that I was to relieve the nurse who was in quarantine with a whooping-cough case, from 6 to 10 P.M. I was very glad the child whooped fairly often, as otherwise I should probably have gone to sleep.