"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the Sorrowing

by Thomas Archer

The business of the place is to heal by means of food, of rest, and of medicine, and there, on the left of the quadrangle, a flight of steps leads downwards to a wide area, where, in the kitchens, the domestic servants are busy clearing up, after serving the eighty-eight rations which have been issued for dinner—rations of fish, flesh, and fowl, or those "special diets" which are taken under medical direction. There is something about this kitchen, the store-rooms, and offices, with the steps leading thereto, and the cat sitting blinking in the sun, which irresistibly reminds me of the heights of Dover and some portion of the barrack building there; the old military look of the place clings to this Gray's Inn Road establishment still, and the visitor misses the wonderful appliances and mechanical adaptations of some more modern institutions, not even lifts to convey the dinners to the wards being possible in such an edifice.

There is some compensating comfort in noting, however, that the nursing staff is so organised as to secure personal attention to the patients, and that the arrangements are touchingly homely, not only in regard to the simple furniture, the few pictures and engravings, and the little collection of books that are to be found in the wards, but also in the matter of sympathetic, motherly, and sisterly help, which is less ceremonious, but not less truly loving, than is to be found in some places of higher pretensions.

Here, on the ground floor, the twenty-two beds of the men's severe accident ward are always full, and some of the cases are pitiable, including maiming by machinery, railway accidents, or injury in the streets. The "Marsden Ward," adjoining is devoted to injuries of a less serious kind, so that there many of the patients can help themselves. In the women's accident ward there are three or four children, one of whom, a pretty chubby-faced little girl of five years old, has not yet got over her astonishment at having been run over by a cab the day before yesterday, picked up and brought into this great room where most of the people are in bed, only to hear that she is more frightened than hurt, and is to go home tomorrow. There are some other little creatures, however, suffering from very awkward accidents, and they seem to be petted and made much of, just as they are in the women's sick ward above, where a delicate-faced intelligent girl, herself improving greatly under prompt treatment for an early stage of phthisis, is delighted to have a little companion to tea with her at her bed-side, the child being allowed to sit up in a chair, and the pair of invalids being evidently on delightfully friendly terms. There is a lower ward, with half a dozen little beds devoted solely to children, who are, I think, all suffering from some form of disease of the joints. Alas! this class of disease comes of foul dwellings, of impure or stinted food, of want of fresh air and water; and it brings a pang to one's heart to note the smiling little faces, the bright beaming eyes, the pretty engaging grateful ways of some of these little ones, and yet to know how long a time it must be before the results of the evil conditions of their lives will be remedied at the present rate of procedure; how difficult a problem it is to provide decent dwellings for the poor, in a city where neighbourhoods such as that which we have just traversed have grown like fungi, and cannot be uprooted without pain and loss which social reformers shrink from inflicting. Thinking of this, and of all that I have seen in this Royal Free Hospital, I am glad to carry away from it the picture of this child's ward and its two young nurses, though I could wish that the walls of that and all the other wards were a little brighter with more pictures, that a fresh supply of books might soon be sent to replenish the library, and that the flowers, that are so eagerly accepted to deck the tables of those poor sick rooms, and carry thither a sense of freshness, colour, and beauty, may come from the gardens and greenhouses of those who can spare of their abundance. To keep the eighty-eight beds full requires constant dependence on public contributions, and yet when we think of the work that is going on here, not the eighty-eight only, but the whole number of 102 should be ready for applicants, who would, even then, be far too numerous to be received at once in a hospital which, with a royal freedom of well-doing, sets an example that might be hopefully followed by other and wealthier charities for healing the sick.

WITH THE PRISONER.

What is the first greeting which a convict receives when he or she is discharged from prison?

Imagine, if you can, the shivering, shrinking, bewildered feeling of the man or woman who, after, undergoing a term of penal servitude, some of it passed in hours of solitary confinement, has all this great city suddenly opened again, with its wilderness of streets, its crowd of unfamiliar faces, its tremendous temptations, its few resources for the friendless and the suspected, its great broad thoroughfares, where on every side may be seen evidences of wealth and plenty; where the tavern and the gin-shop offer a temporary solace to the wretched; and where, also, in every neighbourhood, there are evil slums in which vice finds companionship, and the career of dishonesty and crime can be resumed without difficulty or delay.

Those who have stood outside the walls of Clerkenwell or Coldbath Fields prison, and have watched the opening of the gates whence prisoners emerge into a freedom which is almost paralysing in its first effects, will tell you how the appearance of these poor wretches is greeted in low muttered tones by silent slouching men and women who await their coming. How, after very few words of encouragement and welcome, they are taken off to some adjacent public-house, there to celebrate their liberation; and how, almost before a word is spoken, the male prisoner is provided with a ready-lighted pipe from the mouth of one of his former companions, in order that he may revive his sense of freedom by the long-unaccustomed indulgence in tobacco.

I should be very sorry to cavil at these marks of sympathy. They are eminently human. They do not always mean direct temptation—that is to say, they are not necessarily intended to induce the recipient to resume the evil course which has led to a long and severe punishment. That the result should be a gradual, if not an immediate, weakening of that remorse which is too frequently sorrow for having incurred the penalty rather than repentance of the sin that led to it, is obvious enough; but what else is to be expected? Not many men or women come out of gaol with a very robust morality. Without entering into the question how far our present system of prison discipline and management is calculated to influence the moral nature of culprits who are under punishments for various crimes, scarcely ever classified, and never regarded in relation to the particular circumstances under which they are committed or the character and disposition, the social status, or the mental and moral condition of the offender, it may be broadly and barely stated that our penal legislation is not effectual in promoting the reclamation of the criminal.