“Successful efforts have been made in many directions to improve the
nursing of the sick, and the workhouses must soon be the object of
similar endeavours. Those poor sufferers whose disease is protracted
and hopeless are refused admission into ordinary hospitals, and must
come to the workhouse; and the mere duration of the illness is in such
cases sufficient to reduce to poverty the most industrious, careful,
and temperate—men who, while they could work, paid regularly their
contribution to the poor-rate. Surely, these are entitled to at least
as great care as that which sickness at once assures to the imprisoned
felon, however criminal, for whom well-paid nurses are provided by the
State.
“As to the other class of inmates of the workhouse infirmary—those
whose ailments are curable—mere economy requires that the most
efficient means should be taken to cure them as speedily as possible,
so as to preserve them and their families from becoming paupers.
“Thus justice and expediency alike counsel the introduction into the
workhouse of the best known system of nursing. Probably nothing which
the skill and kindness of medical men can do, no food or physical
appliances which the guardians can supply, no oversight or care which
they, acting through pauper nurses, can bring to bear, are wanting in
the Liverpool workhouse; but it is to be feared that much of this
care, liberality, and thought fails of its object for want of a
sufficient number of reliable and duly qualified nurses to carry out
the instructions given, to administer food and medicine to the
patients, to dress their wounds, and so forth.”
This appeal was supported by two letters of Miss Nightingale and Sir
John M^cNeill, G.C.B., President of the Board of Supervision (the Scotch
Poor Law Board).
_Letter from_ Miss Nightingale.
115, Park Street, W.
_February 5, 1864._
My dear Sir,
I will not delay another day expressing how much I admire, and how
deeply I sympathize with the Workhouse plan.
First let me say that Workhouse sick and Workhouse Infirmaries
require quite as much care as (I had almost said more than)
Hospital sick. There is an even greater work to be accomplished in
Workhouse Infirmaries than in Hospitals.
In days long ago, when I visited in one of the largest London
Workhouse Infirmaries, I became fully convinced of this.
How gladly would I have become the Matron of a Workhouse.
But of a Visitor’s visit, the only result is to break the
Visitor’s heart. She sees how much could be done and cannot do it.
Liverpool is of all places the one to try this great Reform in.
Its example is sure to be followed. It has an admirable body of
Guardians; it is a thorough practical people; it has, or soon will
have again, money.
Lord Russell once said (what is quite true), that the Poor Law was
never meant to supersede private charity.
But whatever may be the difficulties about Pauperism, in two
things most people agree—viz. that Workhouse sick ought to have
the best practical nursing, as well as Hospital sick—and that a
good wise Matron may save many of these from life-long pauperism,
by first nursing them well, and then rousing them to exertion, and
helping them to employment.
In such a scheme as is wisely proposed, there would be four
elements.
1. The Guardians, one of whose functions is to check pauperism.
They could not be expected to incur greater cost than at present,
_unless_ it is proved that it cures or saves life.
2. The Visiting or Managing Committee of the Guardians, whose
authority must not (and need not) in any way be interfered with.