About a month afterwards I found this girl again in the women's sick ward in Cleveland Street with a severe relapse of her rheumatic attack. On inquiry I was told by the girl that shortly after she had gone to Edmonton the matron came into her ward and told her to go to the laundry. On her reminding her that she was still weak, and that the London doctor had directed that she was to be kept warm, the matron abused her and again ordered her there. She went. In a very short time she broke down; the matron, however, persisted in keeping her at work, but at last she became so ill that she was compelled to put her to bed. On the school doctor seeing her it was decided to send her back, to town, some eight miles distant. She was sent in a tilted cart and very imperfectly clad—that, too, on a very cold day. It was altogether so improper a proceeding that I complained to the Board, who made inquiries of the matron, &c., who of course denied the facts in toto. This false answer was sent to me. I was so enraged that I drew up another complaint and sent it to the Poor Law Board and asked for an inquiry. Dr. Markham was deputed to go through the form of an investigation, which he interpreted by going, unknown to me, to the sick ward, asking one or two questions of the girl, and sending for the matron at Edmonton to come to his private house in Harley Street. I did not know this at the time. He then reported that I had made a "frivolous and vexatious complaint." I will leave my readers to determine whether this procedure was not a mockery of a Departmental inquiry. This report, thus obtained, was sent to the Guardians, whereupon a man, who had misconducted himself at the official inquiry by coarsely asking "whether mesenteric disease was not something to eat," moved that I be suspended from my office. This was adopted by the Board, only four of the members supporting me, the fact being that the Board had changed very considerably at the preceding election, some of the Board ejected from office two years before having unfortunately returned again. Of course it was necessary for the Board to report this suspension to the Poor Law Board. The clerk asked permission to absent himself from duty for a time. He took with him the minutes of the Board for the preceding twelve years, and busied himself with extracting all the hostile resolutions which the Board had adopted against me, frequently at his suggestion, in return for my continuous efforts to cleanse their augean stable. I do not know who had distinctly intimated to the clerk that it was desirable to get rid of me, but the mover of my suspension stated that he knew the Poor Law Board wanted to get me discharged. That was admitted some time after by Sir Michael Hicks Beach in a conversation he had with a medical gentleman living near him in Gloucestershire.
Some month after my suspension a copy of the clerk's extracts was sent me by the Poor Law Board, and I was asked what I had to say to it. I acknowledged its receipt, and asked for an official inquiry. This request was ignored, although it was suggested by a minority of the Board, by the Vestry of St. Anne's, Soho, who unanimously supported me, and by many influential inhabitants of the parish in which I had lived and worked. That my suspension would have been followed by the Poor Law Board calling on me to resign my office, without delay, would have been certain, but the President, Earl Devon, was away, although the most terrible distress prevailed that winter in East London. He had gone off to the South of France, and there he remained some three months. On his return, he at once put me out of doubt by removing me from my office. It is very curious, but true, that when I turned on this Department and stated my own case, he made the remark to a friend, who repeated it to me, that he was surprised at my hostility to the Board, as in calling for my resignation no reflection had been made by the Department on my character. At this time a general order was issued by the Department, imposing, without payment, additional and onerous obligations upon Workhouse medical officers. It was to the effect that they should make, from time to time, a return of all that was amiss in their respective workhouses to the Board of Guardians, the doing of which, on my own account, had led to my differences with the Strand Board. It had always been understood that this was one of the duties of the Inspectors, but it was attempted to throw the obligation on the doctors. After Earl Devon resigned, our Council had an interview with Mr. Goschen at the House of Commons, who promised an important modification of this unjust order.
When my compulsory resignation was called for, it was decided by the Rev. Harry Jones, the late Dr. Anstie and others, to call a meeting of the all but moribund Infirmaries Association at Mr. Hart's house, to discuss the matter, and arrange for action. The meeting was addressed by both of these gentlemen, and by several others, and the action of the Department was severely censured by all who were present, except one person. Sir John Simeon, M.P., undertook to put a question in the House, and to move for papers. In due course the question was asked, when Sir Michael Hicks Beach made reply that the Board did not desire to make any reflection on my character, but that I had been called on to resign as I could not get on with the Board of Guardians.
The insufficiency of this answer will be understood when I state that it had been already decided to break up the Strand Board by taking away St. Anne's and joining it to St. James's, in order to make the Westminster Union, and by adding St. Martin to the remnant of the Strand—thereby making it a perfectly new Union.
I have stated that it was arranged at the meeting of the Workhouse Infirmaries Association, called to consider the action of the Department in requesting me to send in my resignation, that the papers connected with the subject should be moved for in the House. This was done, and in due course they were presented. On their appearance, The Lancet commented as follows thereon—
"At last, after months of delay, the Parliamentary Papers concerning the enforced resignation by Dr. Rogers of his post as medical officer of the Strand Union have been published. They amply justify everything we have said as to the unwarrantable character of the action of the Poor Law Board and of the Strand Board of Guardians in the whole affair.
"It is impossible for us to afford space for a detailed analysis of these papers, but we beg to draw attention to the following damning facts. 1. The evidence upon the whole case consists (a) of a series of quotations by the Guardians, or rather by a party among the Guardians, hostile to Dr. Rogers, from minutes and other documents extending over many years, these extracts being selected without any reference to contemporary facts which would throw light upon them, and (b) of utterly gratuitous and unfounded insinuations that the various leading articles in the general press which were written apropos of the notorious scandals at the Strand were written by Dr. Rogers and his friends. 2. That although Dr. Rogers (backed by a most respectable minority of the Guardians and by the Vestry of St. Anne's, Soho) protested that it was impossible to deal with these charges without an open inquiry, such inquiry was refused by the Poor Law Board. 3. As regards the Edmonton scandal which was the cause of the dispute which led immediately to the suspension of Dr. Rogers, the printed evidence distinctly bears out the justice of Dr. Rogers' allegations. 4. Nevertheless Dr. Markham reported to the Poor Law Board that his inquiries had proved these charges to be false. He does not, however, venture to specify the nature of the inquiry by which he disproved charges which, with unblushing effrontery, Mr. Fleming says were made on the unsupported testimony of a pauper, but which are now seen to be absolutely corroborated by two respectable witnesses (one of them a medical man), besides the direct observation of Dr. Rogers; and either Dr. Markham did not take, or the Poor Law Board has suppressed, the evidence of at least one other impartial witness, the master of the Strand Workhouse, which we have reason to believe would have absolutely settled the matter in Dr. Rogers' favour.
"It is well-nigh incredible, but we have heard it on authority which we cannot discredit, that although the so-called inquiry on which the Medical Inspector of the Poor Law Board based the unfavourable report, which gave the Strand Guardians courage to make their onslaught upon Dr. Rogers, included an examination at Dr. Markham's private house of the Edmonton officials chiefly inculpated by Dr. Rogers' charges. Dr. Markham never asked Dr. Rogers one single question. Volumes of comment could not add anything to the ugly emphasis of this fact."
Sir Michael Hicks Beach has been recently afflicted. I would ask him if he does not consider that his sufferings would have been intensified if his sleep had been disturbed by the noise of carpet-beating—if he had been waited on by infirm and drunken women, and broken-down potmen—if the air he breathed had been poisoned by the dust from the beating of carpets, and utterly vitiated by over-crowding? And yet, because I had protested against this hideous wrong-doing, and had done my best to get it altered, he had to get up in the House of Commons and do his best to justify the action of the Board.
The Department thought I was disposed of; it was not long before I showed them the contrary, as some of them did not subsequently hesitate to admit.