III
Such, then, was the scheme which was started on June 24, 1860. Miss Nightingale, confined to her room, was unable to visit the Hospital; but every detail was thought out by her. She took constant counsel from her friend Miss Mary Jones, at King's College Hospital, who gave her valuable suggestions, and she had eyes and ears to serve her everywhere. Her friend Mrs. Bracebridge visited the dormitory, and pronounced it excellent. On the day after the opening, Mrs. Wardroper reported that Dr. Whitfield was as hearty in the cause as herself. They both felt it to be an honour that St. Thomas's had been selected for the experiment, though it was an honour which “would subject them to rather harsh criticism.” Outside opinion, however, was favourable. “I must send a few lines,” wrote Sir William Bowman (Aug. 25, 1860), “to say how much satisfied I was yesterday with all I saw of your nurses at St. Thomas's. As far as a cursory inspection could go, everything seemed perfect as to order, cleanliness, and propriety of demeanour. Your costume I particularly liked,—I suppose I must not say, admired. Two or three of your probationers whom I spoke to impressed me favourably. They seemed earnest and simple-minded, intelligent and nice-mannered. Altogether the experiment seemed to be working well, considering the difficulties it is being tried under. The ‘sisters’ I could judge nothing about. Mrs. Wardroper I was much pleased with, and wish she had sole charge without ‘mediums.’ The dormitory I liked much.” A writer in a popular magazine gave a glowing account of the Nightingale School. “The nurses wore a brown dress, and their snowy caps and aprons looked like bits of extra light as they moved cheerfully and noiselessly from bed to bed.”[344] Miss Nightingale sent books, prints, maps, and flowers for the nurses' quarters. “I do not for one moment think,” wrote Mrs. Wardroper, “that you wish to spoil them by over indulgence, but I very much fear they will sadly miss your considerate kindness when they go from us.” Already (Jan. 1861), the Matron was receiving applications from country hospitals for nurses to be sent after the year's training. Miss Nightingale's demand for detailed information was almost insatiable. Even the Monthly Report, with all its amplitude of heads and sub-heads, was not enough. Mrs. Wardroper supplemented it by private reports. Miss Nightingale suggested to her that she should encourage the nurses to keep diaries which might afterwards be inspected. “I am very pleased,” wrote Mrs. Wardroper, after two or three years' trial (Jan. 11, 1863), “that you approve of the diaries, and I am sure your approbation will stimulate them to increased perseverance.” When Miss Nightingale detected bad spelling, a probationer was given dictation lessons. Miss Terrot, a friend of Miss Nightingale, obtained admission to the Hospital as a supernumerary, and supplemented the Matron's reports. “I am sorry,” she wrote in one of many letters, “that the Probationers have lately been disposed to quarrel among themselves; I suppose where women live together, there will be jealousies and dislikes.” Are sets and cliques and dislikes unknown where men live together? The first year's working of the experiment augured well, however, for the success of the scheme. All the probationers who completed their course (13 out of the 15) expressed their gratitude for the benefits they had received. Six were admitted as full nurses in St. Thomas's Hospital. Two were appointed nurses in Poor Law Infirmaries, and applications were under consideration for the placing of others.[345] The seed had been sown on good ground.
IV
A little later, Miss Nightingale applied a portion of the Fund to another purpose, which she had much at heart. This was the training of midwives for service among the poor. Here, again, she worked through an existing institution, and by the agency of a woman already known to her. The Hospital selected for this experiment was that of King's College, where Miss Nightingale herself, before her call to the Crimea, had been inclined to serve. The nursing at King's College Hospital was undertaken by nurses trained at the St. John's House—an institution which had furnished a contingent to Miss Nightingale's Crimean expedition. The nature of the experiment was explained by Miss Nightingale in a letter to Miss Harriet Martineau (Sept. 24, 1861):—
They are to be persons selected by country parishes between 26 and 35 years of age, of good health and good character, to follow a course of not less than 6 months' practical training, and to conform to all the rules of St. John's House which nurses at King's College Hospital. No further obligation is imposed upon them by us. They are supposed to return to their parishes and continue their avocation there. I am sorry that we shall be obliged to require a weekly sum for the board which will be merely the cost price—not less than 8s. or more than 9s. a week. Our funds do not permit us, at least at first, to do this cost free. For (the Hospital being very poor) we have had to furnish the Maternity Ward and are to maintain the Lying-in beds. In fact, we establish this branch of the Hospital which did not exist before. The women will be taught their business by the Physician-Accoucheurs themselves, who have most generously entered, heart and soul, into the plan, at the bed-side of the Lying-in patients in this ward, the entrance to which is forbidden to the men-students. And they will also deliver poor women at their own homes, out-patients of the Hospital. The Head Nurse of the Ward, who is paid by us, will be an experienced midwife, so that the pupil-Nurses will never be left to their own devices. They will be entirely under the Lady Superintendent—certainly the best moral trainer of women I know. They will be lodged in the Hospital, close to her. If I had a young sister, I should gladly send her to this school—so sure am I of its moral goodness; which I mention, because I know poor mothers are quite as particular as rich ones, not merely as to the morality but as to the prosperity of their daughters. In nearly every country but our own there is a Government School for Midwives. I trust that our School may lead the way towards supplying a want long felt in England. Here we experiment; and if we succeed, we are sure of getting candidates. I am not sure this is not the best way.
The quiet beginning and the principle that nothing second-best is good enough for the people are very characteristic.
V
The experiment at King's College Hospital, which began in October 1861, had to be abandoned after six years' successful working owing to an epidemic of puerperal fever in the wards; but that at St. Thomas's flourishes to this day on an enlarged scale, and throughout Miss Nightingale's active years occupied a constant share of her thoughts and personal attention. From 1872 onwards she wrote, as we shall hear later, a New Year's Address, whenever health and time permitted, to the Nightingale Nurses, constantly inculcating high ideals, and giving personal inspiration to the order which bore her name. Every year as it passed carried into wider circles her scheme of affording to women desirous of working as hospital nurses the means of obtaining a practical and scientific training, and of raising by degrees the standard of education and character among nurses as a class. From year to year the other hospitals were assisted from the mother school with trained superintendents and staff, and new centres were formed with the same objects,[346] and it may well be said that the seed thus sown by Miss Nightingale through the means of the Fund has been mainly instrumental in raising the calling of nurses to the position it now holds. So said the Council of the Fund in their Report for the year in which Miss Nightingale died; and the facts collected in histories of modern nursing fully bear out their statement. In many cases Nightingale nurses were sent out in groups, as we shall hear in a later chapter, to initiate reform in other institutions. In the British Colonies and the United States the “Nightingale power” worked in a similar way. Colonial hospitals went to the Nightingale School for their superintendents. “Miss Alice Fisher, who regenerated Blockley Hospital (Philadelphia), was a Nightingale nurse, and Miss Linda Richards, the pioneer nurse of the United States, enjoyed the advantage of post-graduate work in St. Thomas's, and of Miss Nightingale's personal kindly interest and encouragement.”[347] Nor was the influence of her scheme confined to the Anglo-Saxon world. In Germany, in France, in Austria, and in other countries, the training of nurses similarly followed Miss Nightingale's lead. Thus did the seed which Florence Nightingale transplanted from Kaiserswerth grow up in other soil and with different development into a mighty tree with many branches.