We also append a notice of the same testimonial, taken from The Sun of the same date, since it very succinctly sets forth Officer McWatters' great worth as a philanthropist.
"Handsome and Well-deserved Compliment.—A few days ago Officer G. S. McWatters was surprised by a request to attend at the residence of Mrs. John A. Kennedy, the President of the Ladies' Union Relief Association. There he was presented with a beautiful gold watch, as a token of recognition of the valuable work done by him in assisting the objects of the society. Ever since the war Officer McWatters has devoted all his spare hours to the benefit of Union soldiers and their families. We could fill columns with stories of his work and its good results, but have only room to say that no man of equal means has worked so hard and so successfully. To the assistance and encouragement of that noble institution, the Ladies' Union Aid Society, he has given every moment that could be spared from his official duties. It is a fitting and graceful compliment, when such ladies as Mrs. Wm. F. Havemeyer, Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts, Mrs. Kennedy, and others of similar standing, so generously recognize the faithful services of their co-laborer. Of course Mr. McWatters has official permission to accept his well-earned present, and long may he live to wear it."
We also subjoin the following from the Tribune, inasmuch as it makes allusion to certain benevolent acts and plans of Officer McWatters, to which we have not referred in these biographical notes, but which are most worthy of record. So good a summary is the Tribune's article of Officer McWatters' claims upon the public esteem as an active philanthropist up to the period of its date, that we copy it entire, though it embraces several matters upon which we have descanted more or less extendedly in these Notes:—
"It is always gratifying to see genuine and unpretending merit recognized and honored. We are therefore specially glad to record the fact that the Ladies' Union Relief Association of this city have recently, by the presentation of a valuable and appropriate gift, so recognized and honored the services rendered by Officer G. S. McWatters to the peculiar cause of benevolence to which they are devoted. The gift is a handsome gold watch, and the presentation was made on Thursday evening, the 23d inst., by the President of the Association, Mrs. John A. Kennedy, at her residence, No. 135 West Twenty-Second Street. The Ladies' Union Relief has been established two years. It was instituted with a view to the relief of sick and disabled soldiers, their families, widows, or orphans, from the evils of extreme poverty. Great good has been accomplished by the Association; and, in its peculiar charity, it has had no ally more efficient and indefatigable than Officer McWatters. Indeed, from the very beginning of the late civil war, this officer has consistently and faithfully devoted himself to the cause of the Union soldiers. In 1861 he was associated with the late Daniel Carpenter in the mission of raising money from the police force for the support of the families of policemen who had gone to the war. In 1862—an assessment having been levied on the police force for the purpose of raising and equipping the Metropolitan Brigade—Officer McWatters subscribed more money to this fund than any other patrolman on the force. In 1863, when our military hospitals around Washington and elsewhere were in great need of lemons for the wounded and suffering victims of battle, Officer McWatters collected six hundred dollars from among the police towards supplying this want; and the lemons so procured were gratuitously forwarded to the hospitals South and West by Adams Express Company. A letter of thanks from Dr. Bellows, representative of the Sanitary Commission, was, on this occasion, addressed to the Police Commissioners. In 1863, also, Officer McWatters was a member of the little band of police officers that rescued and defended our building from the miscreants who attacked it during the July riots, and in that affray he was badly wounded. In 1864 he was one of the originators of the New York Sanitary Fair, and he served as one of its committees, with so much devotion and success that he won a letter of thanks from Mrs. Lane, the President of the Fair, Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, and Colonel Le Grand Cannon. Officer McWatters, it should also be mentioned, is the originator of the Police Mutual Aid Society, a very useful institution, founded on the principle of fraternal benevolence. The society has served as a model for similar societies—of firemen, post-office clerks, and other bodies of men all over the country. A plan of practical benevolence has likewise been formed and matured by Officer McWatters in the Masonic Fraternity, and has won the commendation of some of the highest officials in that organization. These facts strongly attest the humane spirit, active intelligence, and earnest devotion to duty which have characterized Officer McWatters in a highly creditable career of practical benevolence. The ladies of the Union Relief Society have no less justly than gracefully acknowledged the worth of his character and services, in making the gift we have recorded. Every lover of this country, we may add, and every friend of mankind, will naturally wish the amplest success to all these workers in the good cause of charity."
The Bellevue Hospital Iniquity.
Charity, holy though the poets sing her, and beautiful the painters picture her lineaments, is, after all, a hag, if real; or only an ideal being, at best, if we are to judge her by her precious, favored children, the almoners she sometimes employs to dispense her bounties. In New York a great many vulgar wretches are, from time to time, officially connected with the charitable institutions under control of the city government. Bellevue Hospital was, in 1869, the theatre of some of these base fellows' operations.
These men were protected by the "Citizens Association," so called,—a self-constituted body of very respectable gentlemen, whose business it is to see that everything in the city is properly conducted; gentlemen of high moral tone, the hems of whose phylacteries (made of invisible or abstract "great moral worth," "solid character," "piety," "good standing in society," and visible and real amounts of greenbacks, all interwoven in some mysterious way, and which together constitute "dignity," we believe), are broad enough to out-Pharisee those marvelous gentlemen in Christ's time who made Jerusalem such a genial place of residence, with their "long prayers."
In July, 1869, the Citizens' Association published, through the newspapers of the city, what they called the result of an investigation of the several institutions under the control of the Commissioners of Charities and Corrections, in which they assured the public that these institutions were all properly and well conducted, and felicitated the said public that the said institutions were in charge of such high toned and efficient gentlemen as they named.
But there was a man in New York, who, when he read the Citizens' Association's manifesto, thought it a most astonishing falsehood, either of the kind known as a lie, or of that kind which people tell sometimes when they are talking of things about which they know nothing; for his duties had called him to Bellevue Hospital on sundry occasions, and he had there witnessed, with his own eyes, sundry things which made his blood boil with indignation; and when he read the manifesto of the Citizens' Association, he determined to correct it.
Of what this man had seen at Bellevue Hospital, some faint conception may be formed from the following facts: There was scarcely a bed there, in any of the wards, which was free from vermin; patients who took most care of the beds, were always liable to get lousy in the water closets; only a single clean sheet a week was allowed, no matter how filthy a bed might become through the poor patient's weak misfortunes; the blankets were dirty; to keep the coverlets clean, for "whited-sepulchre" purposes, when visitors called, they were taken off nights; the cooking of the institution was done by a drunken, filthy cook, and was served to the patients on what had once been tin dishes, but had been so often polished "clean" that they had became rusty sheet-iron plates; the "orderlies," who were paid to attend to the sick, were tyrannical, and little or no attention was paid to the complaints of the sufferers. The only thing a poor sick man had to sit on was a stool, with a seat of about twelve inches by fourteen inches in size, without a back (and most of the sick had weak backs). The sick poor, picked up in the streets, for example, and carried there, had their outer garments taken off, and were put to bed without washing, with their under clothes on, and had no "change of raiment" till they died! The wards were cold in winter, and the poor were glad of even their filthy rags to keep them warm. Generally the bed in which a poor fellow died remained as he left it, unchanged, for the comfort of the next occupant and corpse! But this is quite enough, we opine, for the reader's entire satisfaction.