[1]Liverpool is a seaport, and a receptacle where the poverty and
vice of Great Britain and Ireland seem to accumulate; and it is
probably on this account that the able-bodied female paupers are
peculiarly vicious and worthless.
[2]Among the replies of the London medical officers, one which
seemed especially to impress the Sub-Committee was given by the
senior honorary medical officer of St. Thomas’s. Mr. Hagger
asked him, “If you had to cure the sick by contract at so much a
head, and had to choose between unpaid pauper nurses allotted to
you gratis, or paying yourself for skilled nurses, which would
you choose?” “To pay for skilled nurses, certainly,” was the
unhesitating answer.
[3]In the opinion of the medical men of the Liverpool Workhouse
Hospital, 647 of its present number of patients would be
admissible to an ordinary hospital, and
Men—Medical 40
” Surgical 80
Women—Medical 40
” Surgical 60
220 would not be admissible.
[4]In a training school for superior nurses, it will _never_ be
desirable to employ pauper under-nurses, as they interfere with
the efficiency of the probationers, who are being trained as
superior nurses. The latter are apt to delegate to the paupers
much of the hard but most instructive part of their work. In
ordinary workhouse hospitals, when there are no probationers, a
certain number of pauper assistants may perhaps be useful in
aiding thoroughly trained nurses.