Having regard to the fate that always attends crooked courses, I am very much disposed to think that a different line would have been followed could it have been foreseen that Mr. Bliss would have acted as he did three weeks after the inquiry was ended, when a woman was brought in a cab so very ill that I decided to send her away forthwith to the Asylum Hospital; but, as she was blue in the face from difficulty of breathing and from general exhaustion, I told the receiving wards woman to come into my room, and then gave her a written order for some brandy and beef-tea to be given to the woman before she went away. I addressed the order to the matron. Shortly afterwards the nurse came back and told me that this woman had refused to supply what I had ordered. I then said, "Take the order to the master." After a minute or so she returned, telling me that the master would see me d——d before the woman should have it. I then left the House, and on the next day heard that, exhausted as she was, the woman was taken to Cleveland Street without anything being given to her. That morning I wrote to the medical superintendent of the Sick Asylum, and asked him to let me have a copy of any remarks he had made on her admission (of course, stating the refusal of both master and matron to give her anything at all before she left the Westminster Workhouse). His reply bore out the view I had formed of her condition, and he further said that if I had not written to him he should have made a special report to the managers showing her exhausted condition when admitted. A copy of this letter and a formal complaint against the matron and Bliss for their refusal to give the poor woman anything, was sent to the Board of Guardians, who simply ignored it. I also sent a similar statement to the Local Government Board, but no acknowledgment of its ever having been received was sent to me. Knowing what I do, from many years' experience, what this Department is, I very much regret that I did not send this complaint under cover (privately) to Sir Charles Dilke. It is a curious fact that, although the suppression of my statement at the Local Government Board, and the refusal of the Chairman and his party to make any inquiry into my complaint caused Mr. Bliss to keep his appointment a twelvemonth longer, yet this refusal, having been subsequently conclusively proved, ultimately led to his being called on to resign his appointment, as will be shown hereafter, after the Chairman had in the interval been ejected from office by an overwhelming vote of the indignant ratepayers.
No report of the inquiry having been forwarded to the Board, the Chairman, after the lapse of about three months, caused a letter to be written to the Local Government Board asking that the result of the inquiry should be forwarded. The President sent a copy of the evidence given on oath to the Guardians, thinking that after the Board had read it through they would surely concur with him in thinking that Mr. Bliss was not a fit person to remain as master. But he reckoned wrongly. Sir Charles Dilke did not know the Chairman. This man simply induced his dozen followers to utterly ignore all the evidence, and to assert that it proved nothing.
Meeting one of these Guardians in the House two or three mornings after, he came up to me, and, in a loud tone of voice, he said, "I have been reading your disgraceful evidence against our master." To which I quietly replied, "It was given on oath, and every word of it is true;" when, in a towering passion, he said, "You have disgraced yourself, I tell you; you have disgraced yourself:" and then, before I could reply to this outburst of vulgar vituperation, he went on to say, "I see the Local Government Board have directed us to pay you five guineas for your attending to give evidence: I am the Chairman of the Board, and not one penny shall you ever be paid for your disgraceful evidence." Had this outburst been indulged in some few years before I cannot answer for the form which my resentment would have taken; but I kept my temper, as I knew no credit could accrue from any squabble with this man. The cheque was subsequently paid. The Chairman was far too wise to enter into a struggle with the Local Government Board over such a matter.
At the next meeting of the Board of Guardians he, or one of his followers, moved that a letter be written to the Local Government Board, stating that they had considered the evidence and were of opinion that it in no way affected the character of their master, and requesting that the Board should forthwith send its opinion of the evidence and what charges they considered proved, whereupon there was forwarded to them a list of thirteen charges which the Local Government Board held had been proved against Bliss. It is probable that if the Chairman and the majority had remained quiet, these serious charges against the master would never have seen the light. As it happened, the publication of them gave the opponents of Mr. Bliss the opportunity of conclusively showing up the action of the Board. The letter of the Local Government Board, containing particulars of the charges proved, was as follows—
"Local Government Board,
"Whitehall,
"August 28, 1883."Sir,—I am directed by the Local Government Board to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 10th inst. respecting the decision communicated to the Guardians of the Westminster Union in the letter which we addressed to them by the Board on the 18th ult. upon the charges preferred against Mr. Bliss, the master of the Workhouse, and recently investigated by their Inspectors, Mr. Hedley and Mr. Taylor.
"The Board direct me to state, in reply, that the charges to which they referred in that letter were the following—
"That Mr. Bliss twice threw water from a bucket over an inmate named Ellen Coleman.
"That he kicked a woman named Ann Lane on the back of the thigh [she was sixty-eight years old], the bruise caused thereby was about four inches across.
"That he kicked a boy named James Daley twice on the back [he was about thirteen years old, and was a very good boy].
"That he was in the habit of swearing, and of using expressions of an objectionable character when irritated.
"That he had exercised no supervision as regards the entries in his portion of the Workhouse Medical Relief Book.
"That he had not entered in the Provision Accounts as absent inmates who were in fact absent on leave from the Workhouse.
"That he had contravened the Board's regulations by placing Caroline Barber, aged sixty-four years, upon bread and water.
"That there had been undue delay in the registration of four births in the Workhouse.
"That in the cases of two females, named Caroline Clegg and Elizabeth Jacob, who died in the Workhouse, he did not take sufficient care to give notice of their decease to their respective relatives.
"That through want of due care, a mistake was made as to a body sent for burial.
"That he allowed Elizabeth Farquharson to leave the Workhouse for four days to go to work, and that he charged in his accounts rations for her during that period.
"That his behaviour towards Mrs. Casher, on her visiting the Workhouse to see two girls in whom she was interested, was discourteous; and that he used very improper language to Emily Brown on her visiting the Workhouse to see her husband, an inmate [who was on his deathbed].
"I am, Sir,
"Your obedient servant,
"(Signed) C. N. Dalton,
"Assistant Secretary."
I have been informed that the reading of the above letter was received by the Chairman and his followers with much exasperation, which exhibited itself in threats of vengeance against all those, whether inmates or officers, who had given evidence against the master. One of the first to feel the wrath of the Chairman was Thomas Bailey, a man seventy years of age, who was discharged from his employment in aiding me and the master in keeping the Medical Officer's Relief Book, which he had done for nearly twenty years, because of his wickedness in bringing under my notice the fraudulent entries made in my portion of the Medical Book by the master's clerk at the instance of the matron, an irregularity which it is reasonable to suppose could only have been condoned by the majority of the Board on the supposition that some of them had helped to get rid of what had been falsely entered against the names of my sick patients.
Although this fraud had been clearly proved, no attention had been drawn to it in the report, but a mere misty reference was made to the subject in the fifth charge proved.
Here let me observe that I believe this inquiry would have been absolutely nugatory of any beneficial results if it had been conducted without an assessor being present, and, considering the bearing and physique of the two Inspectors, it seems to me that the assessor modified his own judgment, which would have been entirely adverse to Mr. Bliss, in deference to the manifest wish of the Inspector to screen an old soldier from the proved charges of blasphemy and unmanly violence to an aged woman and a small boy, for which two latter offences Mr. Bliss would have been taken before a magistrate and severely punished if the miserable victims had had the necessary means.
The Chairman thought, in flouting the Local Government Board by his protection of his friend the master, that he would triumph; but at that time he was wholly unaware of what was in store for him and the party he had so long led.