“In 1861[[16]] began the consideration of ‘Destitute Incurables,’ which was in its results to bring forth such a complete reform in the care of the sick in Workhouses, or at least I am surely justified in considering it one of the good seeds sown, which brought forth fruit in due season. One of the first to press the claims of these helpless ones on the notice of the public, who were, almost universally, utterly ignorant of their existence and their needs, was Frances Power Cobbe, who was then introduced to me; she lived near Bristol, and with her friend Miss Elliot, also of that place, had long visited the workhouse, and become acquainted with the inmates, helping more especially the school children, and befriending the girls after they went to service. This may be said to be one of the first beginnings of all those efforts now so largely developed by more than one society expressly for this object.
“I accompanied Miss Cobbe to the St. Giles’s Schools and to the Strand, West London, and Holborn Unions, and to the Hospital for Incurables at Putney, in aid of her plans.”—Recollections, p. 170.
While our plan for the Incurables was still in progress, I was obliged to spend a winter in Italy for my health, and on my way I went over the Hotel Dieu and the Salpêtrière in Paris, and several hospitals in Italy, to learn how best to treat this class of sufferers. I did not gain much. There were no arrangements that I noticed as better or more humane than our own, and in many cases they seemed to be worse. In particular the proximity of infectious with other cases in the Hotel Dieu was a great evil. I was examining the bed of a poor victim of rheumatism when, on looking a few feet across the floor, I beheld the most awful case of small-pox which could be conceived. Both in Paris, Florence and the great San-Spirito Hospital in Rome, the nurses, who in those days all were Sisters of Charity, seemed to me very heartless; proud of their tidy cupboards full of lint and bandages, but very indifferent to their patients. Walking a little in advance of one of them in Florence, I came into a ward where a poor woman was lying in a bed behind the door, in the last “agony.” A label at the foot of her bed bore the inscription “Olio Santo,” showing that her condition had been observed—yet there was no friendly breast on which the poor creature’s head could rest, no hand to wipe the deathsweats from her face. I called hastily to the Nun for help, but she replied with great coolness, “Ci vuole del cotone!” and seemed astonished when I used my own handkerchief. In San-Spirito the doctor who conducted me, and who was personally known to me, told me he would rather have our English pauper nurses than the Sisters. This, however, may have been a choice grounded on other reasons beside humanity to the patients. At the terrible hospital “degli Incurabili,” in the via de’ Greci, Rome, I saw fearful cases of disease (cancer, &c.), receiving so little comfort in the way of diet that the wretched creatures rose all down the wards, literally screaming to me for money to buy food, coffee, and so on. I asked the Sister, “Had they no lady visitors?” “O yes: there was the Princess So and so, and the Countess So and so, saintly ladies, who came once a week or once a month.” “Then do they not provide the things these poor souls want?” “No, Signora, they don’t do that.” “Then, in Heaven’s name, what do they come to do for them?” It was some moments before I could be made to understand, “Per pettinarle, Signora!”—To comb their hair! The task was so disgusting that the great ladies came on purpose to perform it as a work of merit; for the good of their own souls!
The saddest sight which I ever beheld, however, I think was not in these Italian hospitals but in the Salpêtrière in Paris. As I was going round the wards with a Sister, I noticed on a bed opposite us a very handsome woman lying with her head a little raised and her marble neck somewhat exposed, while her arms lay rigidly on each side out of the bed-clothes. “What is the matter with that patient?” I asked. Before the Nun could tell me that, (except in her head,) she was completely paralyzed, there came in response to me an unearthly, inarticulate cry like that of an animal in agony; and I understood that the hapless creature was trying to call me. I went and stood over her and her eyes burnt into mine with the hungry eagerness of a woman famishing for sympathy and comfort in her awful affliction. She was a living statue; unable even to speak, much less to move hand or foot; yet still young; not over thirty I should think, and likely to live for years on that bed! The horror of her fate and the piteousness of the appeal in her eyes, and her inarticulate moans and cries, completely broke me down. I poured out all I could think of to say to comfort her, of prayer and patience and eternal hope; and at last was releasing her hand which I had been holding, and on which my tears had been falling fast,—when I felt a thrill run down her poor stiffened arm. It was the uttermost efforts she could make, striving with all her might to return my pressure.
In recent years I have heard of “scientific experiments” conducted by the late Dr. Charcot and a coterie of medical men, upon the patients of the Salpêtrière. When I have read of these, I have thought of that paralyzed woman with dread lest she might be yet alive to suffer; and with indignation against the Science which counts cases like these of uttermost human affliction, “interesting” subjects for investigation!
Some years after this time, hearing of the great Asylum designed by Mr. Holloway, I made an effort to bring influence from many quarters to bear on him to induce him to change its destination at that early stage, and make it the much-needed Home for Incurables. Many ladies and gentlemen whose names I hoped would carry weight with him, were kindly willing to write to him on the subject. Among them was the Hon. Mrs. Monsell, then Lady Superior of Clewer. Her letter to me on the subject was so wise that I have preserved it. Mr. Holloway, however, was inexorable. Would to Heaven that some other millionaire, instead of spending tens of thousands on Palaces of Delight and places of public amusement, would take to heart the case of those most wretched of human beings, the Destitute Incurables, who are still sent every year by thousands to die in the workhouses of England and Ireland with scarcely one of the comforts which their miserable condition demands.
“House of Mercy,
“Clewer,
“Windsor.
“Madam,