understanding me. Once however when I was saying ‘good-bye’ before an
absence of some months, I was attracted by her feeble efforts to catch
my attention. She took my hand and gasped out ‘God bless you; you wont
find me when you come back. Thank you for coming.’ I said most truly
that I had never been any good to her, and how sorry I was I had never
spoken to her. ‘Oh, but I see your face; it is always a great pleasure
and seems bright. I was praying for you last night. I don’t sleep much
of a night. I thank you for coming.’... 2. A woman between fifty and
sixty dying of liver disease. She had been early left a widow, had
struggled bravely, and reared her son so well that he became foreman
at one of the first printing establishments in the city. His master
gave us an excellent character of him. The poor mother unhappily had
some illness which long confined her in another hospital, and when she
left it her son was dead; dead without her care in his last hours. The
worn-out and broken-down mother, too weak and hopeless to work any
longer, came to her last place of refuge in the workhouse. There, day
by day, we found her sitting on the side of her bed, reading and
trying to talk cheerfully, but always breaking down utterly when she
came to speak of her son. 3. Opposite to her an old woman of ninety
lies, too weak to sit up. One day, not thinking her asleep, I went to
her bedside. I shall never forget the start of joy, the eager hand,
‘Oh, Mary, Mary, you are come! Is it you at last?’ ‘Ah, poor dear,’
said the women round her, ‘she most always dreams of Mary. ’Tis her
daughter, ladies, in London; she has written to her often, but don’t
get any answer.’ The poor old woman made profuse apologies for her
mistake, and laid her head wearily on the pillow where she had rested
and dreamed, literally for years, of Mary.
“4. Further on is a girl of sixteen, paralyzed hopelessly for life.
She had been maid-of-all-work in a family of twelve, and under her
fearful drudgery had broken down thus early. ‘Oh, ma’am,’ she said
with bursts of agony, ‘I did work; I was always willing to work, if
God would let me; I did work while I could, but I shall never get
well; Never!’ Alas, she may live as long as the poor cripple who died
here last summer, after lying forty-six years in the same bed, gazing
on the same blank, white wall. 5. The most cheerful woman in the ward
is one who can never rise from her bed; but she is a good needlewoman,
and is constantly employed in making _shrouds_. It would seem as if
the dismal work gave her an interest in something outside the ward,
and she is quite eager when the demand for her manufacture is
especially great!
“In the Surgical Ward are some eight or ten patients; all in painful
diseases. One is a young girl dying of consumption, complicated with
the most awful wounds on her poor limbs. ‘But they don’t hurt so bad,’
she says, ‘as any one would think who looked at them; and it will soon
be all over. I was just thinking it was four years to-day since I was
brought into the Penitentiary,’ (it was after an attempt to drown
herself after a sad life at Aldershot); ‘and now I have been here
three years. God has been very good to me, and brought me safe when I
didn’t deserve it.’ Over her head stands a print of the Lost Sheep,
and she likes to have that parable read to her. Very soon that sweet,
fair young face, as innocent as I have ever seen in the world, will
bear no more marks of pain. Life’s whole tragedy will have been ended,
and she is only just nineteen!”
[A few weeks later, on Easter Sunday morning when the rising sun was
shining into the curtainless ward, the few patients who were awake saw
this poor girl, who had not been able to raise herself or sit upright
for many weeks, suddenly start forward, sitting straight up in bed
with her arms lifted and an expression of ecstacy on her face, and
something like a cry of joy on her lips. Then she fell back, and all
was over. The incident, which was in every way striking and affecting,
helped me to recall the conviction (set forth in my _Peak in Darien_),
that the dying do, sometimes, catch a glimpse of blessed friends
waiting for them on the threshold.]
“A little way off lies a woman dying in severest sufferings which have
lasted long, and may yet last for weeks. Such part of her poor face as
may be seen expresses almost angelic patience and submission, and the
little she can say is all of gratitude to God and man. On the box
beside her bed there stands usually a cup with a few flowers, or even
leaves or weeds—something to which, in the midst of that sickening
disease, she can look for beauty. When we bring her flowers her
pleasure is almost too affecting to witness. She says she remembers
when she used to climb the hedge rows to gather them in the ‘beautiful
country.’”
Among the few ways open to us of relieving the miseries of these sick
wards and of the parallel ones on the other side occupied by male
sufferers, were the following:—The introduction of a few easy chairs
with cushions for those who could sit by the fire in winter, and whose
thinly-clothed frames could not bear the benches. Also bed-rests,—long
knitted ones, fastened to the lower posts of the bed and passed behind
the patient’s back, so as to form a kind of sitting hammock,—very great
comforts where there is only one small bolster or pillow and the patient
wants to sit up in bed. Occasionally we gave little packets of good tea;
workhouse tea at that time being almost too nauseous to drink. We also
brought pictures to hang on the walls. These we bought coloured and
cheaply framed or varnished. Their effect upon the old women, especially
pictures of children, was startling. One poor soul who had been lying
opposite the same blank wall for twenty years, when I laid one of the
coloured engravings on her bed preparatory to hanging it before her,
actually _kissed_ the face of the little child in the picture, and burst
into tears.
Further, we brought a canary in a cage to hang in the window. This seems
an odd gift, but it was so successful that I believe the good visitors
who came after us have maintained a series of canaries ever since our
time. The common interest excited by the bird brought friendliness and
cheerfulness among the poor old souls, some of whom had kept up “a
coolness” for years while living next to one another on their beds! The
sleepless ones gloried in the summer-morning-song of Dicky, and every
poor visitor, daughter or granddaughter, was sure to bring a handful of
groundsel to the general rejoicing of Dicky’s friends. Of course, we
also brought flowers whenever we could contrive it; or a little summer
fruit or winter apples.
Lastly, Books, magazines, and simple papers of various kinds; such as
_Household Words_, _Chambers’ Magazine_, &c. These were eagerly borrowed
and exchanged, especially among the men. Nothing could be more dreary
than the lives of those who were not actually suffering from any acute
malady but were paralysed or otherwise disabled from work. I remember a
ship-steward who had been struck with hemiplegia, and had spent the
savings of his life time—no less than £800,—in futile efforts at cure.
Another was a once-smart groom whom my friend exhorted to patience and
thankfulness. “Yes, Ma’am,” he replied promptly, “I will be _very_
thankful,—when I get out!”
As an example of the kind of way in which every sort of wretchedness
drains into a workhouse and of what need there is for someone to watch
for it there, I may record how we one day perceived at the far end of a
very large ward a figure not at all of the normal workhouse stamp,—an
unmistakeable gentleman,—sitting on the side of his bed. With some
diffidence we offered him the most recent and least childish of our
literature. He accepted the papers graciously, and we learnt from the
Master that the poor man had been found on the Downs a few days before
with his throat cut; happily not irreparably. He had come from Australia
to Europe to dispute some considerable property, and had lost both his
lawsuit and the friendship of all his English relatives, and was
starving, and totally unable to pay his passage back to his wife and
children at the Antipodes. We got up a little subscription, and the good
Freemasons, finding him to be a Brother, did the rest, and sent him home
across the seas, rejoicing, and with his throat mended!
But the cases of the _incurable_ poor weighed heavily on us, and as we
studied it more, we came to see how exceedingly piteous is their
destiny. We found that it is not an accidental misfortune, but a regular
descent down the well-worn channels of Poverty, Disease and Death, for
men and women to go to one or other of the 270 hospitals for _curable_
patients which then existed in England (there must be many more now),
and after a longer or shorter sojourn, to be pronounced “incurable,”
destined perhaps to linger for a year or several years, but to die
inevitably from Consumption, Cancer or some other of the dreadful
maladies which afflict human nature. What then becomes of them? Their
homes, if they had any before going into the hospital, are almost sure
to be too crowded to receive them back, or too poor to supply them with
both support and nursing for months of helplessness. There is no
resource for them but the workhouse, and there they sink down, hopeless
and miserable; the hospital comforts of good beds and furniture and
carefully prepared food and skilled nurses all lost, and only the hard
workhouse bed to lie, and _die_ upon. The burst of agony with which many
a poor creature has told me: “I am sent here because I am incurable,”
remains one of the saddest of my memories.
Miss Elliot’s keen and practical mind turned over the problem of how
this misery could be in some degree alleviated. There was no use in
trying to get sufficient Hospitals for Incurables opened to meet the
want. There were only two at that time in England, and they received (as
they do now) a rather different class from those with whom we are
concerned; namely, the deformed and permanently diseased. At the lowest
rate of £30 a year it would have needed £900,000 a year to house the
30,000 patients whom we should have wished to take from the workhouses.
The only possible plan was to improve their condition _in_ the
workhouses; and this we fondly hoped might be done (without burdening
the ratepayers) by our plan, which was as follows:—
That the incurables in workhouses should be avowedly distinguished from
other paupers, and separate wards be allowed to them. That into those
wards private charity be freely admitted and permitted to introduce,
with the sanction of the medical officer, such comforts as would
alleviate the sufferings of the inmates, _e.g._, good spring beds, or
air beds; easy-chairs, air-cushions, small refreshments such as good tea
and lemons and oranges (often an immense boon to the sick); also snuff,
cough lozenges, spectacles, flowers in the window, books and papers;
and, above all, kindly visitors.
The plan was approved by a great many experienced men and women; and, as
it would not have added a shilling anywhere to the rates, we were very
hopeful that it might be generally adopted. Several pamphlets which we
wrote, “_The Workhouse as a Hospital_,” “_Destitute Incurables_,” and
the “_Sick in Workhouses_,” and “_Remarks on Incurables_,” were widely
circulated. The newspapers were very kind, and leaders or letters giving
us a helping hand were inserted in nearly all, except the _Saturday
Review_, which refused even one of its own regular contributors’
requests to introduce the subject. I wrote an article called _Workhouse
Sketches_ for Macmillan’s Magazine, dealing with the whole subject, and
begged that it might be inserted gratuitously. To my delight the editor,
Mr. Masson, wrote to me the following kind letter which I have kept
among my pleasant souvenirs:—
“23, Henrietta Street,
“Covent Garden,
“February 18th, 1861.
“Dear Madam,
“As soon as possible in this part of the month, when there is much to
do with the forthcoming number, I have read your paper. Having an
almost countless number of MSS. in hand, I greatly feared I might,
though very reluctantly, be compelled to return it, but the reading of
it has so convinced me of the great importance of arousing interest in
the subject, and the paper itself is so touching, that I think I
ought, with whatever difficulty, to find a place for it....
“In any case accept my best thanks for the opportunity of reading so
admirable and powerful an experience; and allow me to express my
regret that I had not the pleasure of meeting you at Mrs. Reid’s.
“I am, dear Madam,
“Yours very truly,
“DAVID MASSON.
“Miss Frances Power Cobbe.
“Should you object to your name appearing in connexion with this
paper? It is our usual practice.”
The paper appeared and soon after, to my equal astonishment and delight,
came a cheque for £14. It was the first money I had ever earned and when
I had cashed the cheque I held the sovereigns in my hand and tossed them
with a sense of pride and satisfaction which the gold of the Indies, if
gained by inheritance, would not have given me! Naturally I went down
straight to St. Peter’s and gave the poor old souls such a tea as had
not been known before in the memory of the “oldest inhabitant.”
We also printed, and ourselves directed and posted circulars to the 666
Unions which then existed in England. We received a great many friendly
letters in reply, and promises of help from Guardians in carrying out
our plan. A certain number of Unions, I think 15, actually adopted it
and set it going. We also induced the Social Science people, then very
active and influential, to take it up, and papers on it were read at the
Congresses in Glasgow and Dublin; the latter by myself. The Hon. Sec.
(then the young poetess Isa Craig) wrote to me as follows:
“National Association
“For the Promotion of Social Science,
“3, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall,
“28th December, 1860.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“The case of the poor ‘incurables’ is truly heartrending. I cried over
the proof of your paper—a queer proceeding on the part of the
Sub-editor of the Social Science Transactions, but I hope an earnest
of the sympathy your noble appeal shall meet with wherever our volume
goes, setting in action the roused sense of humanity and _justice_ to
remedy such bitter wrong and misery.
“Yours sincerely,
“ISA CRAIG.”
A weightier testimony was that of the late Master of Balliol. The
following letters from him on the subject are, I think, very
characteristic and charming:—
“Coll. de Ball., Oxon.
“Hawhead, near Selkirk,
“Sept. 24th.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I am very much obliged to you for sending me the extract from the
newspaper which contains the plan for Destitute Incurables. I entirely
agree in the object and greatly like the touching and simple manner in
which you have described it.
“The only thing that occurs to me in passing is whether the system of
outdoor relief to incurables should not also be extended? Many would
still require to be received into the house (I do not wish in any
degree to take away from the poor the obligation to support their
Incurables outdoors, and it is, perhaps, better to trust to the
natural human pity of a cottage than to the better attendance, warmth,
&c., of a workhouse). But I daresay you are right in sticking to a
simple point.
“All the world seems to be divided into Political Economists, Poor Law
Commissioners, Guardians, Policemen, and Philanthropists, Enthusiasts,
and Christian Socialists. Is there not a large intermediate ground
which anyone who can write might occupy, and who could combine a real
knowledge of the problems to be solved with the enthusiasm which
impels a person to devote their life to solving them?
“The way would be to hide the philanthropy altogether as a weakness of
the flesh; and sensible people would then be willing to listen.
“I entirely like the plan and wish it success....
“I am afraid that I am not likely to have an opportunity of making the
scheme known. But if you have any other objects in which I can help
you I shall think it a great pleasure to do so.
“Remember me most kindly to the Dean and his daughters. I thought they
were not going to banish themselves to Cannes. Wherever they are I
cannot easily forget them.
“I hope you enjoy Garibaldi’s success. It is one of the very few
public events that seem to make life happier.
“Believe me, with sincere respect,
“Yours truly,
“B. JOWETT.”
“Coll. de Ball., Oxon.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I write a line to thank you for the little pamphlet you have sent me
which I read and like very much.
“There is no end of good that you may do by writing in that simple and
touching style upon social questions.
“But don’t go to war with Political Economy. 1st. Because the P. E.’s
are a powerful and dangerous class. 2nd. Because it is impossible for
ladies and gentlemen to fill up the interstices of legislation if they
run counter to the common motives of self-interest. 3rd. (You won’t
agree to this) Because the P. E.’s have really done more for the
labouring classes by their advocacy of free trade, &c., than all the
Philanthropists put together.
“I wish that it were possible as a matter of taste to get rid of all
philanthropic expressions, ‘missions, &c.,’ which are distasteful to
the educated. But I suppose they are necessary for the Collection of
Money. And no doubt as a matter of taste there is a good deal that
might be corrected in the Political Economists.
“The light of the feelings never teaches the best way of dealing with
the world _en masse_ and the dry light never finds its way to the
heart either of man or beast.
“You see I want all the humanities combined with Political Economy.
Perhaps, it may be replied that such a combination is not possible in
human nature.
“Excuse my speculations and believe me in haste,
“Yours very truly,
“B. JOWETT.”
About the same time that we began to visit the Bristol work house, Miss
Louisa Twining bravely undertook a systematic reform of the whole system
throughout the country. It was an enormous task, but she had great
energy, and a fund of good sense; and with the support of Lord
Mount-Temple (then Hon. William Cowper-Temple), Mrs. Tait, and several
other excellent and influential persons, she carried out a grand
reformation through the length and breadth of the land. Her _Workhouse
Visiting Society_, and the monthly _Journal_ she edited as its organ,
brought by degrees good sense and good feeling quietly and
unostentatiously to bear on the Boards of Guardians and their officials
all over the country, and one abuse after another was disclosed,
discussed, condemned, and finally, in most cases abolished. I went up
for a short visit to London at one time on purpose to learn all I could
from _General_ Twining (as I used to call her), and then returned to
Bristol. I have been gratified to read in her charming _Recollections_
published last year (1893), that in her well-qualified judgment Miss
Elliot’s work and mine was really the beginning of much that has
subsequently been done for the sick and for workhouse girls. She says:
“In 1861[16] began the consideration of ‘Destitute Incurables,’ which
was in its results to bring forth such a complete reform in the care
of the sick in Workhouses, or at least I am surely justified in
considering it one of the good seeds sown, which brought forth fruit
in due season. One of the first to press the claims of these helpless
ones on the notice of the public, who were, almost universally,
utterly ignorant of their existence and their needs, was Frances Power
Cobbe, who was then introduced to me; she lived near Bristol, and with
her friend Miss Elliot, also of that place, had long visited the
workhouse, and become acquainted with the inmates, helping more
especially the school children, and befriending the girls after they
went to service. This may be said to be one of the first beginnings of
all those efforts now so largely developed by more than one society
expressly for this object.
“I accompanied Miss Cobbe to the St. Giles’s Schools and to the
Strand, West London, and Holborn Unions, and to the Hospital for
Incurables at Putney, in aid of her plans.”—_Recollections_, p. 170.
While our plan for the Incurables was still in progress, I was obliged
to spend a winter in Italy for my health, and on my way I went over the
Hotel Dieu and the Salpêtrière in Paris, and several hospitals in Italy,
to learn how best to treat this class of sufferers. I did not gain much.
There were no arrangements that I noticed as better or more humane than
our own, and in many cases they seemed to be worse. In particular the
proximity of infectious with other cases in the Hotel Dieu was a great
evil. I was examining the bed of a poor victim of rheumatism when, on
looking a few feet across the floor, I beheld the most awful case of
small-pox which could be conceived. Both in Paris, Florence and the
great San-Spirito Hospital in Rome, the nurses, who in those days all
were Sisters of Charity, seemed to me very heartless; proud of their
tidy cupboards full of lint and bandages, but very indifferent to their
patients. Walking a little in advance of one of them in Florence, I came
into a ward where a poor woman was lying in a bed behind the door, in
the last “agony.” A label at the foot of her bed bore the inscription
“_Olio Santo_,” showing that her condition had been observed—yet there
was no friendly breast on which the poor creature’s head could rest, no
hand to wipe the deathsweats from her face. I called hastily to the Nun
for help, but she replied with great coolness, “_Ci vuole del cotone!_”
and seemed astonished when I used my own handkerchief. In San-Spirito
the doctor who conducted me, and who was personally known to me, told me
he would rather have our English pauper nurses than the Sisters. This,
however, may have been a choice grounded on other reasons beside
humanity to the patients. At the terrible hospital “degli Incurabili,”
in the via de’ Greci, Rome, I saw fearful cases of disease (cancer,
&c.), receiving so little comfort in the way of diet that the wretched
creatures rose all down the wards, literally _screaming_ to me for money
to buy food, coffee, and so on. I asked the Sister, “Had they no lady
visitors?” “O yes: there was the Princess So and so, and the Countess So
and so, saintly ladies, who came once a week or once a month.” “Then do
they not provide the things these poor souls want?” “No, Signora, they
don’t do that.” “Then, in Heaven’s name, what do they come to do for
them?” It was some moments before I could be made to understand, “_Per
pettinarle, Signora!_”—To comb their hair! The task was so disgusting
that the great ladies came on purpose to perform it as a work of merit;
for the good of their _own_ souls!
The saddest sight which I ever beheld, however, I think was not in these
Italian hospitals but in the Salpêtrière in Paris. As I was going round
the wards with a Sister, I noticed on a bed opposite us a very handsome
woman lying with her head a little raised and her marble neck somewhat
exposed, while her arms lay rigidly on each side out of the bed-clothes.
“What is the matter with that patient?” I asked. Before the Nun could
tell me that, (except in her head,) she was completely paralyzed, there
came in response to me an unearthly, inarticulate cry like that of an
animal in agony; and I understood that the hapless creature was trying
to call me. I went and stood over her and her eyes burnt into mine with
the hungry eagerness of a woman famishing for sympathy and comfort in
her awful affliction. She was a _living statue_; unable even to speak,
much less to move hand or foot; yet still young; not over thirty I
should think, and likely to live for years on that bed! The horror of
her fate and the piteousness of the appeal in her eyes, and her
inarticulate moans and cries, completely broke me down. I poured out all
I could think of to say to comfort her, of prayer and patience and
eternal hope; and at last was releasing her hand which I had been
holding, and on which my tears had been falling fast,—when I felt a
thrill run down her poor stiffened arm. It was the uttermost efforts she
could make, striving with all her might to return my pressure.
In recent years I have heard of “scientific experiments” conducted by
the late Dr. Charcot and a coterie of medical men, upon the patients of
the Salpêtrière. When I have read of these, I have thought of that
paralyzed woman with dread lest she might be yet alive to suffer; and
with indignation against the Science which counts cases like these of
uttermost human affliction, “interesting” subjects for investigation!