“Certainly,” I replied, “there were to be two pedestals for the two statues.”
“I haven’t a notion what you mean,” answered Hopkinson, impatiently. “Whose statues?”
“Joseph Bell’s and my own,” I called back over my shoulder.
And although Hopkinson was quite right, and
these statues have not been placed there even yet, still it is only fitting that the great building on the Oxford Road should have had some memorial of Bell and myself, for without us there would have been no Royal Infirmary on the Oxford Road. A mediæval builder would have expressed in a series of sculptured capitals the whole history of the Battle of the Sites, and left satirical portraits of the old Board in gargoyles hanging over the guttering, whilst a statue of Joseph Bell would have adorned a spacious quadrangle, round the walls of which myself and the others of his committee were portrayed in brilliant mosaics. But your modern architect, who would be annoyed at being called a builder, never puts into his work any of the history of his building, but is quite content to erect adequate walls and roof and useful equipment and decorate the outside, much as a confectioner be-sugars a cake, to please the eye for the moment rather than with any intention of expressing ideas in his art. No doubt the Gothic days are over, and the Gothic spirit is dead, but Manchester has got what she wanted, an Infirmary building second to none in the kingdom.
I always intended to have a return match with the old Infirmary Board, because, although I won the first of the rubber, the loss of the game did not to my mind fall on the shoulders of those who ought to have borne it.
Early in 1893 a lady sought my advice through her solicitor. Her story was a very extraordinary
one. She had been a nurse at the Royal Infirmary since 1889. Her career was successful. She had been selected to attend on the late Oliver Heywood, and up to November of 1892 there had never been a word of complaint about her work or her conduct. A small-pox epidemic now broke out in Lymm, in Cheshire. Another nurse had been sent there and was ill—it was supposed, of small-pox. My client was sent there hurriedly to take her place. She found the so-called small-pox hospital to be two cottages converted into a temporary hospital, and her colleague was ill in bed, and was taken away. There was also a wife of a tramp dying of small-pox, and eight or ten patients. There was no water in the house. It is needless to repeat other unpleasant details of want of equipment. She stuck to her task for several days; she sat up with a delirious patient all night, and when the patient died she had to help the men bring in the coffin and screw down the lid, it being with much difficulty, and only after bribes of whisky that they would come inside the cottages at all. After writing letters to the authorities in Manchester and asking the local doctor for help that did not come, she at length broke down in health and fled. Arrived at Monsall, she was nursed there for a week, and at the end of that time received her dismissal without notice, and was refused permission, though at the end of her probation, to pass her examinations.
Every effort was made to get the old Board to do justice to the lady and let her pass her examination,
but as no redress was to be obtained without litigation a writ was issued. Under her agreement the Infirmary Board had no right to send her to Lymm at all. The lady desired no damages against the charity, and, therefore, an action was brought for an order to compel the Board to allow her to take her examinations. Shee led me in the case, and Gully and Sutton were for the defendants—and I have no doubt told them exactly what they thought of them. Certainly it was with an air of great relief that Gully, at Mr. Justice Day’s suggestion, threw up the defence and agreed that the lady should sit for her examination.