Excellent Women

by Various

But it was to Ireland that her thoughts ever turned, and it was of work in Ireland that she was thinking even while training in London For by this very training she hoped to be the better fitted for work in her own beloved country. "Ireland is ever my bourn," she wrote. And again:—"My heart is ever in Ireland, where I hope ultimately to work."

After a year at St. Thomas's, and a short visit home, she returned to London to take the superintendence of a small hospital in connection with the Deaconesses' Institution in Burton Crescent. Here she had all the nursing to do, as there were but few patients, and she had great joy in ministering to them. "I trust," she writes in a letter to her aunt, "I am gaining a quiet influence with my patients; they are my great pleasure." And again: "I am very happy here among my patients, and often feel God has sent me here; I have two revival patients; one had found peace before she came, the other is seeking it, and to both I can talk. Then I have a poor woman with cancer, who likes me to speak of Jesus, whom I believe she truly loves; so you see I am not without work."

A short time at this hospital, and a few months as superintendent at the Great Northern Hospital, ended her work in London. The work at the latter tried her much both in body and mind, for not only did the whole responsibility of it rest upon her shoulders, but owing to the inexperience of her assistants, most of the nursing devolved on her as well. One patient who was critically ill she was obliged for six weeks to nurse entirely both by night and day. Nervous debility was the natural consequence of such overwork, and a deafness from which she had suffered at Kaiserswerth so much increased that the doctor ordered her to rest. That was not immediately possible, as there was no one to take her place, and when at last a successor had been found, and she was able to return home, she was so weary both in body and mind that she failed to find her usual delight in the loveliness of Fahan. A few weeks' stay, however, in the bracing air near the Giant's Causeway restored her to her wonted health.

The winter was passed at her home, resting quietly in preparation for the work in Liverpool, of which the offer has been already mentioned. In the spring of 1865 she left for ever the old familiar spot with its beautiful hills and glens, and its cottages, to many of whose inmates she had been the means of bringing comfort and peace; Liverpool, with its needy poor and its many difficult problems, claiming her for the last three years of her life.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONGST THE PAUPERS.

In the year 1698, William III. stated in a speech that:—"Workhouses, under a prudent and good management, will answer all the ends of charity to the poor, in regard to their souls and bodies; they may be made, properly speaking, nurseries for religion, virtue, and industry." But could the good king who anticipated so many advantages from workhouses have only seen our poor law institutions a hundred and fifty or sixty years later, he would have been pained to learn how far they had fallen short of his sanguine expectations. The sick and helpless were entrusted to the care of women who, being paupers themselves, and of a low class, and being for the most part in the workhouse through loss of character, were found to be almost incapable of training. Rough they were, and in many cases brutal as well, while their roughness and brutality were intensified by the free use of intoxicants. Their language was terrible, and not only did they quarrel constantly amongst themselves, but fights were of frequent occurrence.

To endure such treatment and to witness such scenes was the daily lot of a sick pauper, who knew also that when dead he would have little better than the burial of a dog, since it was the common custom in many workhouses to bury corpses naked, with no covering but a few shavings thrown over the body. Little wonder was it that the poor, when overtaken by age or disease, shrank from the thought of entering a place which to them seemed worse than a prison, choosing rather to die without attention than to be treated in such a barbarous manner.

It seems strange that it was so long after a great reformation had been wrought in the management of our prisons that any one was found to lift up a voice in behalf of the much enduring inmates of our workhouses. There seemed to be no one who could spare a thought for the thousands of sick and poor in these institutions. But it was the old story of "out of sight, out of mind," for if only the evil had been apparent our English nation with its love of justice would have seen it righted long before. Workhouses were to be found all over the land, yet the public seemed not at all curious, much less interested, in the question whether they were properly managed or not. The guardians were often ignorant men, and were very slow to admit visitors, perhaps from a foreshadowing suspicion of the exposure which was in store for them, and the consequent necessity and expense of change, so that we need not wonder that the opposition which was called forth when first the evils of the workhouse system were exposed was tremendous, and that the task of awakening real interest seemed well nigh hopeless.

In the Liverpool Workhouse the state of things was no worse than in many others, and in many respects it was not so bad. There was a good committee, and therefore there was nothing like the wholesale starvation and cruelty which existed in too many other workhouses There was also some measure of thoughtful care for the sick ones, for Agnes Jones in a letter written after her first visit, says:—"There seemed care for the patients too; a few plants and flowers, Illustrated News pictures on the walls, and a 'silent comforter' in each ward, not the utterly desolate look one often meets in such places." Still, there were no trained nurses, and it was impossible for any committee, however zealous, to counteract all the evils of pauper nursing. The need for reform was great, and happily for Liverpool and for the country at large, there were not only eyes to see the need, but a mind which had grasped the only solution of the difficulty, and a large and sympathetic heart which prompted the hand to open wide the purse to accomplish it, for Mr. William Rathbone, ever foremost in all schemes for ameliorating the condition of the poor and needy, had long been alive to the necessity of substituting for pauper nurses trained paid ones. He it was who not only suggested the change, but offered himself to bear the whole expense of the scheme for three years, feeling assured that by that time the guardians would be so convinced of its practical good that they would adopt it permanently.