There was also in “The Sisters' Tower,” as this part of the Barrack Hospital came to be called, a small sitting-room; and in it “were held those councils over which Miss Nightingale so ably presided, at which were discussed the measures necessary to meet the daily-varying exigencies of the hospital. From hence were given the orders which regulated the female staff. This, too, was the office from which were sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters at home, telling of the sufferings of the sick and wounded.”[116] In the Report of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, as also in Miss Nightingale's Statement to Subscribers, the full list of articles supplied by her may be found, tabulated with a precision and amplitude of detail characteristic of her. It included the miscellaneous utensils, etc., enumerated above, and also various articles of food required for the “extra diets” mentioned in the preceding chapter. The supplies were furnished partly by the Times Fund, partly out of moneys sent to her by benevolent persons, and partly out of the private purse of herself and her immediate friends. Much of the expenditure was ultimately refunded to her by the Government. The sick and wounded soldiers at Scutari would, I fear, have felt ill requited for the lack of linen, sheets, utensils, and extra diet by hearing that a beautiful new church was being built at Pera.
But, it may be asked, were the things which Miss Nightingale procured and issued really wanted? May they not have been her fads? and was not hers perhaps a work of supererogation, for could not the official Purveyor have supplied them? Such statements were widely made at the time, and one can readily understand the reason. By drawing upon her own stores, Miss Nightingale not only furnished the soldiery with the things they were needing, but “administered to the defaulting administrators a telling, though silent, rebuke; and it would seem that under this discipline the groove-going men winced in agony, for they uttered touching complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief did not choose to give them time (it was always time the males wanted), and that the moment a want declared itself, she made haste to supply it herself.”[117] But such complaints were entirely unfounded; for it was shown by the Duke of Newcastle's Commission that she never issued anything from her stores, nor did she allow any one else to do so, except upon the demand of the medical officers, and after inquiry of the Purveyor if he could supply them. I find among Miss Nightingale's papers a few of the original requisitions from medical officers. Here is one of them:—
Palace Hospital, 18th January 1855. Madam—I have the honor to forward a requisition for 50 shirts and 50 warm flannels. The Purveyor has none. Knowing the extensive demand, I have limited my request to meet the urgent requirements of the most serious cases in my charge. I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient humble servant,
Edward Menzies, Staff Surgeon in Charge.
The list, said the commissioners drily, “must not be regarded as conclusive proof that the articles mentioned in it were invariably wanting in the [Government] stores.” Goods, they explained, “have been refused, although they were, to our personal knowledge, lying in abundance in the store of the Purveyor.” Why refused? Because the Purveyor took it upon himself to override the requisition of the medical officers? Not at all. “This was done because they had not been examined by the Board of Survey. On one occasion, in the month of December last [1854], we found that this was the case with respect to Hospital rugs, and it is probable that this has not been the only instance of such an occurrence.” Miss Nightingale's letters to Mr. Herbert show that it was a frequent occurrence. For instance, in February 1855, she received a requisition from the medical officers at Balaclava for shirts. She knew that 27,000 shirts had at her instance been sent by Government from home, and they were already landed. But the Purveyor would not let them be used; “he could not unpack them without a Board.” Three weeks elapsed before the Board released the shirts. The sick and wounded, lying shivering for want of rugs and shirts, would have expressed themselves forcibly, I fear, if it had been explained that they must shiver still until the Board of Survey's good time had arrived.
Miss Nightingale's impatience at such delays was the origin, doubtless, of a story which had wide currency at the time that on one occasion she ordered a Government consignment to be opened forcibly, while the officials wrung their hands at the thought of what the Board of Survey might presently say. The story was mentioned in the Roebuck Committee; and, though it was not confirmed, I think that Miss Nightingale was quite capable of the dreadful deed. Certainly she often insisted on obtaining first-hand evidence for herself, instead of trusting to the report of others; for in one of her letters to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21, 1854), I find this passage: “This morning I foraged in the Purveyor's Store—a cruise I make almost daily, as the only way of getting things. No mops, no plates, no wooden trays (the engineer is having these made), no slippers, no shoe-brushes, no blacking, no knives and forks, no spoons, no scissors (for cutting the men's hair, which is literally alive), no basins, no towelling, no chloride of zinc.” Then she enumerates the things which Mr. Herbert should send from London, adding, “The other articles mentioned above as not now in store can be had at Constantinople” or Marseilles; whence, I imagine, she proceeded to get them. Shopping at Scutari was not an afternoon's easy amusement:—
“English people,” she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 10), “look upon Scutari as a place with inns and hackney-coaches, and houses to let furnished. It required yesterday, to land 25 casks of sugar, four oxen and two men for six hours, plus two passes, two requisitions, Mr. Bracebridge's two interferences, and one apology from a quarter-master for seizing the araba, received with a smile and a kind word, because he did his duty; for every araba is required on Military store or Commissariat duty. There are no pack-horses and no asses, except those used by the peasantry to attend the market 1¼ miles off. An araba consists of loose poles and planks, extended between two axle-trees, placed on four small wheels, and drawn by a yoke of weak oxen.… Four days in the week we cannot communicate with Constantinople, except by the other harbour, 1¼miles off, to which the road is almost impassable.”
But, somehow or other, Miss Nightingale was able to supply from her stores in hand, or to obtain from Constantinople or Smyrna or elsewhere, many things which the Purveyor-General could not, or would not, obtain. She had the forethought, as already related, to lay in at Marseilles on her way out a large supply of articles which she deemed likely to be useful; and at Scutari Mr. Macdonald of the Times was untiring and resourceful. In the course of time, as funds continued to pour in, and the Government purveying became more efficient, Miss Nightingale was able on emergency to supply, not only the British, but their allies. In the spring of 1856, when the scourge of typhus committed sad ravages among the French, and the amour propre of the Intendance prevented the acceptance of the humane offer of medical comforts as a loan from the British Government, Miss Nightingale paved the way in overcoming this scruple by sending, as a present to the French Sisters and Medical Officers, large quantities of wine, arrowroot, and meat-essence. The Sardinian Sisters of Mercy also experienced much kindness at her hands when the destruction of a supply-ship by fire had left them without many things needed by their patients. She sent supplies also to the Prussian Civil Hospital, where many Britishers were treated; for this good office she received a letter of thanks from the king of Prussia (Sept. 1856). To her quarters at Scutari, the Turks, too, often resorted for medicine and advice. In her, says an eye-witness, the sickly and needy of all nations found an active friend.[118] “She embraced in her solicitude,” said a French historian of the Crimean War, “the sick of three armies.”[119]
Miss Nightingale's initiative was further useful in extracting needed articles which were contained in the Government store, but yet had not been forthcoming, either because nobody else had asked for them, or because somebody had not been lucky enough to hit upon the right moment for asking. The system in force was most ingeniously contrived to bring about such a state of things. Articles were only supplied to the hospitals by the Purveyor on the requisition of a medical officer. The medical officers were overburdened with work, and perhaps omitted to send in a requisition. Or they sent in a requisition, and the form was returned, marked “None in store.” The articles may subsequently have been obtained or have arrived from England, but no note was kept in the Purveying Department of unfulfilled requisitions, and unless the medical officers requisitioned again, the articles were not supplied. The Commissioners found that from this cause patients were sometimes left without beds, though there were bedsteads in store at the time. Happily Miss Nightingale had laid in a good many at Marseilles.
II
There was another sphere in which Miss Nightingale came to the rescue of the sick and wounded from the blunders of official administration. She clothed them, 50,000 shirts in all having been issued from her store. The history of this private clothing department is curious. The regulations of the War Office assumed that every soldier brought with him into hospital an adequate kit, and it was no part of the Purveyor's duty to supply such a thing as a shirt. But three of the four generals of division in the Crimea had decided not to disembark the men's knapsacks. Sebastopol, it was confidently expected, would fall in a few days' time, and the men were to march light. In most cases they never saw their knapsacks again.[120] Hence the sick and wounded who arrived at Scutari immediately after the Battle of the Alma were destitute of all clothing except what was on their persons, and that was in many cases fit only for the furnace. No regulation existed whereby, if the soldier had for military reasons been deprived of his kit, the deficiency could be made good. The supply of a change of linen for the sick and wounded while in hospital, and of clean shirts to wear when invalided home or returned to the front, was perhaps a better allocation of benevolent funds than a supply of altar-cloths for a new church at Pera. At any rate Miss Nightingale thought so; and thus she and her coadjutors were in some measure the clothiers as well as the purveyors of the wounded soldiers.