that free charity which takes help where it is needed most; and this
qualification is the more obvious when we turn from the sick wards to
the accident wards, and remember that three great railway termini are
close at hand, and others not far off; that all round that teeming
neighbourhood men, women, and even children, are working at poor
handicrafts, which render them liable to frequent injuries, and that in
the crowded streets themselves--from the great busy thoroughfare of
Holborn, to the bustle and confusion of the approaches to the stations
at King's Cross--there is constant peril to life and limb.
There is something so remarkable in the external appearance of the
building, such a military look about its bold front, such a suggestion
of a cavalry yard about the broad open area behind this tall wooden
entrance gate, that you begin to wonder how such a style of architecture
should have been adopted for a hospital. The truth is that like
many--nay, like most of our noblest work--this great provision for
healing the sick began by not waiting for full-blown opportunities. The
need was there, and the means that came to hand were used to meet it.
This building was originally the barracks of that loyal and efficient
regiment, the "Light Horse Volunteers," and so excellently had those
gallant defenders of king and constitution provided for their own
comfort and security, that when in 1842 the premises were vacant, and
the lease for sale, the governors of the Royal Free Hospital became the
purchasers, the long rooms were easily turned into ample, cheerful, and
well-ventilated wards, and the various outbuildings and offices were
quickly adapted to the reception of patients.
But the hospital had at that date been working quietly and effectually
for above fourteen years. Fourteen years before its inauguration in
Gray's Inn Road, this "free" hospital, which was not then "royal," had
been commenced in Greville Street, Hatton Garden, and the immediate
incident which led to its foundation is so suggestive, so inseparable
from the recollection of the want which it was designed to alleviate,
and from its own generous recognition of the unfailing freedom of true
charity, that it might well be the subject of a memorial picture. Alas!
it would be a tragic reminder of those days before any provision was
made for extending medical aid to sufferers who had no credentials save
humanity and their own deep necessity. It would be a grim reminder to
us, also, that some of our great charities established for the relief of
the sick are still trammelled with those restrictions which demand
recommendations, to obtain which the applicant is often condemned to
delay and disappointment. It would show us that our hospitals are not
yet free.
Those of my readers who can remember the entrance to the broad highway
of Holborn nearly fifty years ago--stay, that is going back beyond
probable acknowledgment,--let me say those of us who knew Smithfield
when it was a cattle market, who had heard of "Cow Cross," and been told
of the terrible purlieux of Field Lane; who had occasionally caught a
glimpse of that foul wilderness of courts that clustered about the Fleet
Ditch; had read of Mr. Fagin, when "Oliver Twist" was first appearing in
chapters, and had dim recollections of nursery tales about Bartlemy fair
and "hanging morning" at the Old Bailey; those of us who remember the
cries of drovers, and the lowing and bleating of herds and flocks in the
streets on Sunday nights; the terrible descent of Snow Hill; the
confusion and dismay of passengers and vehicles on the steep incline of
Holborn Hill; the reek of all that maze of houses and hovels that lay in
the valley; those of us, in short, who can carry our memories back for a
few years beyond the time when the new cattle market was built at
Islington, the pens and lairs of Smithfield demolished, the whole
Holborn valley dismantled, only a remnant, a mere corner, of Field Lane
being left standing after the great viaduct was built--can imagine what
the church of St. Andrew was like when, with its dark and dreary
churchyard, it stood on the slope of Holborn Hill, instead of being as
it now is in a kind of subway. That churchyard, with its iron gate, was
reached by stone steps, which were receptacles for winter rain and
summer dust, the straw from waggons, the shreds and sweepings from
adjacent shops, the dirt and refuse of the streets.
On those steps a young girl was seen lying one night, in the winter of
1827--lying helpless, lonely, perishing of disease and famine.
The clocks of St. Andrew, St. Sepulchre, St. Paul, had clanged and
boomed amidst the hurry and the turmoil of the throng of passengers; had
clanged and boomed till their notes might be heard above the subsiding
roar of vehicles, and the shuffling of feet, till silence crept over the
great city, and more distant chimes struck through the murky air,
tolling midnight. Still that figure lay upon the cruel stones, under the
rusty gate of the churchyard, as though, unfriended and unpitied by the
world, she waited for admission to the only place in which she might
make a claim in death, if not in life.
Not more than eighteen years old, she had wandered wearily from some
distant place where fatal instalments of the wages of sin had done their
work. She had come to London unknown, unnoted, to die. That she had come
from afar is but a surmise; she may have been a dweller in this great
city, lost amidst the stony desert of its streets, friendless with the
friendlessness of the outcast or the wretched, to whom the acquaintances
of to-day have little care or opportunity to become the solacers of
to-morrow; she may have crept to that dark corner by the churchyard
gate, amongst the rack and refuse of the street, as a place in which
she, the unconsidered waste and refuse of our boasted civilisation,
could most fitly huddle from the cold. She was not left actually to die
there, but two days afterwards she passed out of the world where she had
been unrecognised. Not without result, however.
Among those who had witnessed the distressing occurrence was a surgeon,
Mr. William Marsden, who for some time before had repeatedly seen cause
to lament, that with all our endowed hospitals, our great medical
schools, and the advance of scientific knowledge, the sick poor could
only obtain relief by means of letters of recommendation and other
delay, until the appointed days for admission. The sight that he had
witnessed awoke him to fresh energy. He determined to establish a
medical charity, where destitution or great poverty and disease should
be the only necessary credentials for obtaining free and _immediate_
relief. His honest benevolent purpose did not cool; in February in the
following year (1828), the house in Greville Street was open as a free
hospital, and it was taken under the royal patronage of George IV., the
Duke of Gloucester becoming its president.
King William IV. succeeded George IV. as the patron of this free
hospital, and one of the earliest manifestations of the interest of our
Queen in public charitable institutions was the expressed desire of her
Majesty to maintain the support which it had hitherto received, and to
confer upon it the name of the _Royal_ Free Hospital.
It need scarcely be said that the late Duke of Sussex took a very strong
interest in this charity, and at his death it was determined to erect a
new wing, to be called "the Sussex" wing. This work was completed in
1856; and in 1863, by the aid of a zealous and indefatigable chairman of
the committee, above £5,000 was raised by special appeal for the
purposes of buying the freehold of the entire building, so that it is
now, in every sense, a free hospital, with a noble history of suffering
relieved, of the sick healed, the deserted reclaimed, the sinful
succoured, and those that were ready to perish snatched from the jaws of
death.
Since the foundation of the modest house in Hatton Garden in 1828 above
a million and a half of poor sick and destitute patients have obtained
relief, and the average of poor patients received within its wards is
now 1,500 annually, while 45,000 out-patients resort thither from all
parts of London. The relief thus afforded costs some £8,000 a year, and
this large sum has to be provided by appeals to the public for those
contributions by which alone the continued effort can be sustained.
Standing here within the "Moore" ward, so called after the energetic
chairman before referred to, I cannot think of any appeal that should be
more successful in securing public sympathy than these two
statements--First, that many of the inmates have been immediately
received on their own application; and secondly, that, bearing in mind
the sad story which is, as it were, the story of the foundation of the
hospital, this ward is occupied by women. Many of them are persons of
education and refinement, who yet would have no asylum if they had not
been received within these sheltering walls, others may be poor,
ignorant, and perhaps even degraded, but divine charity is large enough
to recognise in these the very need which such an effort is intended to
alleviate. Here at least is a peaceful retreat, where in quiet
reflection, in grateful recognition of mercies yet within reach, in the
sound of pitying voices, and the touch of sympathetic hands, the weary
may find rest, the throes of pain may be assuaged.
Here are the two fundamental rules of the hospital, and they form what
one might call a double-barrelled appeal not to be easily turned aside:--
IN-DOOR PATIENTS.
Foreigners, strangers, and others, in sickness or disease, having
neither friends nor homes, are admitted to the Wards of this Hospital
on their own application, so far as the means of the charity will
permit.
OUT-DOOR PATIENTS.
All sick and diseased persons, having no other means of obtaining
relief, may attend at this Hospital every day at Two o'clock, when they
will receive Medical and Surgical Advice and Medicine free.
Even while I read the latter announcement the out-patients are
assembling in the waiting-room, on the right of the quadrangle; the
dispenser, in his repository of drugs, surrounded by bottles, jars,
drawers, and all the appliances for making up medicines, has set his
assistants to work, and is himself ready to begin the afternoon's duty;
the consulting-physician of the day has just taken his seat in one plain
barely-furnished apartment, the consulting-surgeon in another, while the
resident house-surgeon has completed his first inspection of
in-patients, and is ready with particulars of new cases.
These rooms, where patients assemble, and doctors consult, are on the
right of the pleasant quadrangle, with its large centre oval garden
plot, containing a double ring of trees; and here also is the reception
room for "accidents" and urgent cases--a very suggestive room, with
styptics, immediate remedies, and prompt appliances ready to hand, but
like all the rest of the official portion of the building, very plain
and practical, with evidence of there being little time to regard mere
ease or ornament, and of a disregard of anything which is not associated
with the work that has to be done. It is the same with other apartments,
where it is obvious that no unnecessary expenditure is incurred for mere
official show.
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.
Even if some determination to begin life anew, to avoid associations
that have led to infamy and disgrace to accept any labour anywhere in
order to obtain an honest subsistence, has been working in the mind of a
convict during the period of imprisonment, and under the advice and
remonstrance of the chaplain and the governor, what is to sustain such
half-formed resolutions? Supposing even that the discharged prisoner has
been so amenable to the regulations of the gaol that he or she has had
placed to the credit account that weekly "good-conduct money," which,
when the term of punishment has ended, amounts to a sum sufficient to
provide for immediate necessities, where is employment to be looked for?
In what quarter is the owner of a few shillings--which may have to last
a week or more--to seek a lodging and a meal, and that companionship
which must be one of the keenest longings of the newly-released and yet
solitary and half-dazed creature, who is ready to receive with grateful
avidity any friendly greeting that promises relief from the long
monotony of the gaol?
Surely, then, there can be few conditions which appeal more forcibly to
Christian beneficence than that of the captive who is released after
having undergone a sentence of penal servitude, part of which has been
passed in solitary confinement. Whatever may have been the impressions
made upon the mind during the period of punishment, and the influence
exercised by instruction or exhortation, the very fact of regaining
liberty, the excitement of freedom, and the uncertainty of the first
steps a man or woman is to take outside the prison walls, will always
involve a danger, before which a very large proportion of released
convicts will succumb.
What, then, is being done in order to extend a helping hand to these,
who are among the most destitute and unfortunate; who, even if they have
relatives, may be ashamed to seek their aid, or are doubtful of the
reception that awaits them, while the only companionship which they can
claim at once, and without question, is that which will surround them
with almost irresistible incentives to a lawless life?
In the very centre of this vast metropolis, at the point where its great
highways converge, and yet in a modest quiet house standing a little
back from the roar and turmoil of the main street, we shall find what we
seek. Here, on the doorpost of No. 39, Charing Cross, is the name of
"The Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society," and in two or three offices on
the first floor--one of which is, in fact, a reception-room for the
discharged prisoners themselves--the work for which there is such a
constant and pressing need is steadily carried on, under the direction
of a very distinguished committee, of whom the treasurer is the Hon.
Arthur Kinnaird, and the first honorary secretary, Mr. W. Bayne Ranken,
who is assisted by Mr. S. Whitbread and Mr. L. T. Cave. In looking at
the names of the gentlemen who are concerned in this admirable effort,
you will have noticed that some of them are also associated with other
charitable organisations which we have visited together, and notably
with those of that Soho district where we last joined in the musical
diversions of the Newport Market Refuge. As we enter this front office
at Charing Cross, we have a pleasant reminder of that occasion, for we
are welcomed by the indefatigable performer on the cornet, who, when we
last met him, was making "the hills resound" in the upper room of the
old slaughter-house, and carrying all his juvenile military band with
him in one resonant outburst of harmony that awoke the echoes as far as
Seven Dials. To-day he is carrying out his ordinary secretarial and
managerial duties, as officially representing the Society, about which
he can give us some information worth hearing.
But there are other visitors for whom preparation has already been made
in the next room--men dressed decently, and yet having a certain
furtive, unaccustomed bearing, as though they were not at the moment
quite used to their clothes or to public observation. Some of them are
not without a truculent half-defiant expression lurking beneath their
subdued demeanour; others have an open, keen outlook; and a few others,
again, both in the shape of their head and the peculiar shifty
expression of eye and mouth, and one might also say of hand, would at
once be characterised by the experienced observer of London life as men
who had "been in trouble" more than once. On the table of the front
office the object which has at once attracted our attention is a
perfectly new carpenter's basket containing a decent set of tools, and
the man for whom it is intended will be here for it by-and-by to take it
away, just as the shoemaker who has just gone out has carried with him
"a kit," with which, in addition to a little stock of money, he is about
to begin the world afresh, under the auspices of his friends, one of
whom--either a member of the committee, or the secretary, or one of the
visiting agents--will keep him in view, and give him an occasional
encouraging call while he remains in the metropolitan district. If a
situation should be found for him in the provinces, either the clergyman
of the district, or some other friend of the Society, is informed of his
previous history, and has a sincere interest in his well-doing. In no
case have the London police anything whatever to do with watching or
inspecting discharged prisoners under the care of the Society; and, on
the other hand, it is a standing rule that where situations are found
for these men and women, the employers are informed of their previous
history, though any recommendation of the Society may be regarded as a
strong inference that their _protégé_ is trying to redeem lost
character.