in the scale of civilization, than their treatment of the sick or
helpless poor dependent upon them. Dives, the barbarian, whether in
Jerusalem two thousand years ago, or in Boston to-day, lets the poor
lie at his gate in indifference, at the mercy of every scavenger that
may prey upon them. The "Good Samaritan," whether on the road to
Jericho, or at Rainsford Island, stops with sympathetic eye, a helpful
hand, and open purse to share his best with the victim of misfortune or
wrong.
We come this morning to examine into the attitude of Boston toward her
paupers who are cared for in the two institutions at Long Island and
Rainsford Island. I have made repeated visits to these islands, and
approach this discussion only after many weeks of reflection, and a
careful sifting of the information received. I have hesitated about
treating the subject at all, because a criticism of a public
institution is supposed by so many people to mean a personal accusation
or attack upon the parties in charge of it. I wish to say, in the
beginning, that so far as I have been able to see, the officers
immediately in charge of these institutions are kind-hearted and
humane, and are endeavoring to do the best they can, with the means at
their disposal. After saying that, I propose, without any regard as to
whom it may please or displease, to point out candidly what seems to me
inexcusable thoughtlessness and grievous errors in the treatment of the
paupers in these institutions.
The largest and best building is on Long Island. Here the men are kept.
There are about three hundred on the average, but this is increased to
between four and five hundred in the winter. And right here is a wrong
that ought to be righted.
[Illustration: TRAMPS.]
The excuse for careless and indifferent treatment of the really
deserving pauper men who are on Long Island is that every winter the
place is crowded with "bummers" who come to Long Island in the winter
for free quarters, and as soon as the weather is fine for out-door
tramping in the summer, they go away to escape work in the institution,
coming back again in cold weather, It would certainly be very easy to
devise a law to make this impossible. No able-bodied person who is able
to work, ought under any circumstances to be sent to the almshouse.
People who are able to work and support themselves, and do not do so
under their own direction, ought to be sent to the work-house, and
compelled to do so under the direction of a proper officer. This would
take away from Long Island a lot of drunken tramps who congregate there
in the winter. The same remark applies to women. The intemperate and
vicious woman ought not to be sent to the almshouse; it should be
sacredly kept as "a refuge and a home where the respectable poor, the
sick, and the old--those who have outlived their children, or have
broken down in the race of life--may find shelter and care." But the
honest cases ought not, and need not, suffer in order to punish these
frauds. At Long Island, on one of my visits, there were ninety-two men
on the sick-roll, and only one nurse, and he not a trained nurse. I am
also satisfied that the food is insufficient either for sick or well. A
reporter of the Boston _Post_ managed to interrogate an old man who was
able to sit up by the side of his little cot. In answer to a question,
this sick old man said they did not get any milk; and yet there is a
large farm attached to the institution, and there is no excuse for not
having plenty of milk provided at very little expense for these infirm
old people. The old man said they had meat three times a week--remember
that means three meals out of twenty-one; and when asked by the
reporter, "What kind of meat?" he answered pathetically, "It wouldn't
do any good for me to tell you, sir, but it's mighty poor stuff."
Permit me to quote in full a little article in the Boston _Herald_ of a
few weeks since, under the title, "Some Harbor Policemen Overpowered by
Long Island Hospitality:"--
"There is a little joke which is causing considerable merriment at the
Harbor police station at the present time, and the key to it is
contained in the words, 'Long Island hospitality.' A few days ago the
police-boat 'Protector' was ordered to take to Long Island a party of
surveyors, who were to lay out grounds for the proposed new hospital.
"The work of the boat's passengers occupied an unexpectedly long time,
and as no provision had been made for dinner, the party invoked the
hospitality of the almshouse on the island. The surveyors and officers
of the boat were assigned to one part of the institution, while the
crew were invited into the large dining-hall, usually occupied by the
inmates. It is this last-named party which is bearing the brunt of the
joke. The feast of which they were invited to partake consisted of a
lot of potatoes with their jackets on, without the formality of a
platter, a plate of what the boys termed 'soup-meat,' a soup-dish minus
the soup, knives and forks, and empty mugs. Grace was omitted; the men
spent the time in gazing first at the 'feast,' and then at each other.
A common thought seemed to occupy the minds of all, for without a word
they simultaneously arose from the table and left the room.
"They waited at the boat until the surveyors' work had been completed,
and then came back to Boston. It was then time to make the regular
afternoon trip, and with empty stomachs they started out again and
finished the day. It was the intention of the victims to keep the
matter 'shady;' but the joke leaked out, as such things will, and it is
worse than shaking a red rag at a bull to say 'Long Island hospitality'
to certain blue-coats who labor on the water." And yet they were there
at one of the three lucky meals out of twenty-one, when there was
"soup-meat."
Among the men in this institution was pointed out to me a
marble-cutter, who was a thoroughly respectable, self-supporting
workman. He was hurt while at work by the falling of a stone, and so
disabled by an injury of the spine that he was unable to continue
employment. As soon as sickness had used up what money he had, having
no relatives who could help him, there was nothing left for him but to
come here. One of the officers spoke of him in the highest terms, and
told me how, without direction from any one else, he sought by many
daily circuits of the building to strengthen his spine. I was assured
by the same officer that many others who were inmates were there purely
through misfortune which was from no fault of their own, but from such
accidents as are likely to happen to any honest laboring-man. Now I
maintain that such men ought to be treated with a decent regard for
their self-respect, and given a comfortable home. It is an outrage that
this marble-cutter, and others like him, are fed more shabbily than if
they had been convicted of a crime.
In addition to the men on Long Island, there is one ward in the
hospital used for women. There were fifty-two sick women crowded into
this ward at the time of my visit. There was only one nurse, an
excellent woman, but with no special education for her duties. The
night helper is a woman who is hired for fifty cents a day. For this
ward of fifty-two sick women there was no bath-room at all. The nurse's
own room was situated at the other end of the building from her ward,
and she had to go across the men's ward to get to her patients at
night, if she went. There was no place for insane or refractory
patients, or for the dying, except in the general ward. Sometimes
their cries and groans are very distressing to the other patients. In a
recent case of death from mania, the whole ward was disturbed for
several nights.
Most of the women are kept at Rainsford Island, and there are many more
reasons for criticism there than on Long Island. The only hospital
there is an old smallpox hospital, more than three-score years old.
This is crowded beyond all thought of the requirements of sanitary
science. Think of a room for confinement cases only seven feet wide and
less than twelve feet long. In the annual report of Public Institutions
for 1889 we find the following statement by the then resident
physician: "It is remarkable that a building which was a small-pox
hospital fifty-seven years ago, and which since then has undergone no
material improvement, should up to the present time be the only
hospital connected with our pauper institutions." The doctor might have
added that this building was abandoned a quarter of a century ago by
the State, as unfit for sick persons. It is certainly no extravagance
to say that these arrangements for the care of the sick on Rainsford
Island are more than half a century behind the times. The only thing
modern I saw was the keen-eyed physician.
There is about the entire institution a lack of careful thoughtfulness
for the comfort of the inmates, that is exceedingly painful to a
thoughtful observer. For example, the island is very beautifully
situated, and there are many fine trees in the shade of which, with
comfortable arrangements, it would be a most healthful and delightful
experience for hundreds of these infirm and aged women to sit on summer
days; but, although I searched carefully throughout the grounds, I
found only two benches under the trees anywhere, and a half-dozen more,
perhaps, around on the sea-front, and not one of them with a back to
it. Think of arranging for the comfort of your own grandmother, eighty
years old, in that way!
The food here, too, is insufficient. For instance, the matron told me
that only those who worked were allowed butter on their bread. These
old women are set down to bread and tea for one meal, and bread and
soup for another; they, too, have a little meat of some kind three
times a week, and potatoes at dinner. Again I repeat that, with the
large farm attached to Long Island, there is no reason why these old
women, as well as the old men, should not have an abundant quantity and
an appetizing variety of vegetables, as well as plenty of nourishing
milk. And I maintain that it is a shame and disgrace that the Boston
which less than five years ago could spend more than twenty thousand
dollars in feasting and wining a Hawaiian woman who came to visit us,
expending four thousand dollars for flowers alone, cannot afford to
furnish a little butter to spread on the bread of the helpless old
women on Rainsford Island, even if they are unable to work. Think of
the stolid indifference, or thoughtlessness--to hunt for charitable
words--of an institution having several hundreds of people to care for,
and yet making no difference in its hospital diet. No matter what the
disease, it is to eat up to the cast-iron programme, or starve. Who
that has been ill or has watched anxiously with their own dear ones,
but has noticed the capriciousness of a sick person's appetite, the
longing for little delicacies, for just a taste of some rare and
unusual dish or drink? Such things are not expensive; they only mean
that somebody shall invest a little genuine sympathy and thoughtfulness
in the matter. Throughout this entire institution, hospital and all,
having over four hundred women, there is not a single trained nurse! In
this day of enlightenment it ought to be a crime for any hospital to be
carried on without trained nurses. There is no night watchman on the
whole island, and, after eight o'clock in the evening, nobody who is
responsible at all. In the main institution on Rainsford Island the
attic is crowded with beds to such an extent as to make a healthful
atmosphere impossible.
You must remember that many people here are paupers through no fault of
their own. Many of them are victims of incurable disease; and, as
against such cases the Boston hospitals are closed, the almshouse is
for them the only open door. Public sentiment must be aroused to
demand, with Florence Nightingale, that "work-house sick shall not be
work-house inmates, but they shall be poor sick, cared for as sick who
are to be cured if possible, and treated as becomes a Christian country
if they cannot be cured." We people who are followers of Him who
confessed, "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but
the Son of man hath not where to lay His head," cannot afford to treat
people who are, through misfortune, in the same condition to-day as
though they were some species of criminal, rather than as the hostages
of our Christ. Perhaps you say these people are not appreciative, are
not refined, do not have fine feelings--how do you know that? That is
doubtless true about some of them, but about many of them nothing could
be more false. People do not lose their powers of appreciation when
they lose their money, and I doubt not that these people would average,
in the essential characteristics of manly and womanly character, with
the same number of people of the same age you could gather from the
homes along your street. Last Christmas some kind-hearted women went
down to Rainsford with some gifts for the sick poor. One of them,
writing about their reception, says: "It was very touching to see the
happiness our little gifts conferred. The first was a poor old woman,
more than eighty, nearly blind from cataracts over her eyes. She is
called 'Welsh Ann' because she is from Wales. My friend told her I had
been in Wales. She seemed so glad to shake hands with one who had been
in her own country, and her voice choked with tears as she thanked me
and took my gift. But she brushed the tears away from her poor
sightless eyes while my friend repeated to her the Twenty-third Psalm,
and then at her request knelt and prayed. The apron which I gave her
has quite a history. A girl who earns her own living, hearing I was
making these aprons, sent me this one which she bought. It was worked
across the bottom, and I thought, as poor Ann rubbed her hands over the
work she could not see, but only touch, how cheered the young lady
would be when she heard of the joy her gift gave. I was asked to give
one pretty apron to another Ann--one they called 'Greenland Ann,'
because she is so very fond of hearing them sing 'From Greenland's icy
mountains.'" And surely that spirit of the Christ, which is warm enough
to impel men to dare the frost of "Greenland's icy mountains" in order
to comfort with His blessed Gospel their Esquimau brother, ought to
prompt us to deal thoughtfully and tenderly with the dear old soul that
likes to hear Him sung about on Rainsford Island.
I shall never forget the impression made upon me by Mark Guy Pearse,
one of the greatest of the English preachers, in his story of how he
was ordained a preacher. He said: "It was no bishop or presbytery that
consecrated me, but a saintly Cornish woman, whom we children called
old Rosie, and who was, indeed, my right reverend mother in God.
"So far as I can recollect, it was always sun-shiny when we visited old
Rosie, though of course it must have rained sometimes. She had a single
room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip
led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except
the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch.
There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through
the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost
every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and
of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too;
there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her
beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven
long years. She is a hundred and five years old, and her hair is snowy
white, yet there is not a wrinkle on her brow, and her cheeks have the
rosy brightness from which she gets the familiar name. All her
relations are gone, and she is now a pauper with only two or three
shillings a week from the parish.
"We might call her poor and lonely and bedridden, yet she is brimful of
happiness. The Bible is constantly at her hand, and she is generally
thanking God for all His mercies. She has lived in the light and love
of the Saviour since she was eleven years old; and she has gone so long
and so far in the good way, that now it is as if she were sitting just
outside the golden gates, crowned with radiant beauty and clothed with
white raiment, waiting until her Lord shall bid her enter.
"At dear old Rosie's bed we used to have a little service; first a
chapter read from the Bible, then a hymn--'Rock of Ages' was her
favorite, sung to 'Rousseau's Dream.' When the prayer was over, old
Rosie would lay her thin hand on the little lad's curly head, and say
as she turned her face upward, 'O Lord, bless the little lad! Bless him
and make him a preacher.' I didn't like that prayer of hers, and I used
to say to myself, 'I will never be a preacher; I will be a doctor, and
gallop about the country visiting people.' But one Sunday, after the
service and her little prayer, she said 'good-by' to us all. 'You won't
see me any more; so it must be good-by for a long time now, until we
meet at home.' We wondered what she meant. Two days after, she was
carried home by God's angels from her lonely room. My little heart was
like to break at the thought of never seeing her again; and I went out
by myself to the garden and prayed, 'Please God, I don't care so much,
after all, if I become a preacher, if it will make dear Rosie any
happier.'"
It would be better for us that a millstone were hanged about our necks,
and we were cast into the depths of the sea, than that we should be
thoughtless or indifferent of one of God's poor, like old Rosie.
Well, you ask, how can it be made better? My answer is that there ought
to be a radical change in the Board of Control of Public Institutions.
I do not make any personal fight on the three men now in control. I
make war on the whole system. As it is now, there are, in and about
Boston, ten public institutions, occupied by thousands of men and women
and children, carried on at an expense of nearly six hundred thousand
dollars, entirely under the control of three commissioners. This is not
wise. There ought to be a large advisory board made up of distinguished
citizens. This should be composed of women as well as men. It is
certainly a very short-sighted and thoughtless arrangement that,
although there are in these institutions several hundred women and
children, there is no woman who has any authorized interest in them.
There is every reason why women should be on the Boards of Control of
Public Institutions. The editor of the New York _Nation_ says:
"Whatever improvement there has been in the condition of Bellevue
Hospital, for example, and of the hospitals of Blackwell's and Hart's
Islands, during the past twenty years--and it is very great--has, as a
rule, been due to women's initiative and labors."
The fact is, that everything that concerns health, education, and good
morals occupies the minds of women more than it does the minds of most
of their husbands and fathers; and in every department of municipal
administration, where the conditions of the streets, of the sewers, of
the hospitals and almshouses, and of the police, are in question, women
have an equal interest with men, and in order to the public well-being
and safety, ought to have an equal voice. I am sure that an advisory
board of leading citizens, on which were three or four level-headed,
humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment
of Boston's paupers. Do not put this question aside. This is Boston's
question, and you are a part of Boston. As some one sang in the Boston
_Transcript_ not long ago:--
"Lazarus lies at your gate!
O proud and prosperous city,
How long will you let him wait?
Listen and look; have pity.
Dives, oh, cannot you hear,
For the music and dance of your high land,
The moaning of misery drear
That comes from the desolate island?
Finest of linen you wear;
Comrades in luxury you cherish,
Sumptuous daily you fare.
What of your neighbors who perish?
When you would heighten your cheer
By a contrast that's very dramatic,
Fancy what scenes may appear
In a certain dim hospital attic.
Swarming and sweltering, and scant
Of air,--foul to soul as to senses,--
Where he that is guilty of Want
Meets a doom fit for graver offences.
Worn-out, the pauper nurse sleeps;
The sufferer, forsaken, is crying
With no one to moisten his lips,--
No one to mark that he's dying.
Who should hear the _catch_ in his breath
'Mid the coughs, curses, ravings, resounding
Through the ward o'er the bed of his death,
From the close-crowded pallets surrounding?
And picture the scenes, to come
Perhaps, of another sorrow
Nearer your stately home,--
That you will not have to borrow;
When hushed is all merry din,
And your smiling guests have vanished;
When your flowers come blooming in,
To be glanced at once and banished;
When vain are all the crafts
That Mammon serve, and never
Tour costliest, coolest draughts
Can quench the fire of your fever;
When your street is red with tan,
And your oft-pulled door-bell muffled,
That the peace of a dying man
By no faintest sound be ruffled;
When love, to give you rest,
Doth toil with soothings fruitless;
And skill has done its best,
And the town's best skill is bootless;
When the chaises leave the place,
And the helpless, poor patrician
Lies looking up in the face
Of only the Great Physician,--
God grant it with joy may be
That you hear, 'What you did toward others
Ye have done it unto Me,
In the least of those My brothers!'
Lazarus lies at your gate;
Our kindly dear old city,
Let him no longer wait;
Open the doors of your pity!"
XI.
COMMENT ON "OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THE BOSTON PAUPERS".
"There is no caste in blood,
Which runneth of one hue, nor caste in tears,
Which trickled salt with all."
Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln, who has given a large amount of time and
painstaking interest to the treatment of the paupers, and who deserves
more credit than any one else for the present hopeful campaign in their
behalf, writes as follows in the _Boston Transcript_ of August 28:--
"Those of your readers who were kind enough to follow in your columns,
last winter, the articles for which you courteously made space there
concerning the poor of Boston, will, I think, be interested to know
what has since been done for the islands, and why so much controversy
is aroused by the sermon of Dr. Banks on the paupers.
"Early in the spring two new commissioners were appointed. It was hoped
that this change in the board would bring about good results, but, in
point of fact, matters remained much the same. The appropriation for a
new hospital, though made months ago, was not acted upon until this
week, when bids for the building were opened."
[Illustration: WOMEN'S HOSPITAL WARD AT LONG ISLAND.]
[Footnote: This is the best hospital ward on the two islands. Screen
shown on the right, behind which is a dying woman.]
"On August 5, I had the honor to lay before the commissioners eight
requests on behalf of the inmates of the island, as follows:--
1. More occupation for the able-bodied.
2. More comfortable chairs for the aged women, who are obliged to rise
at 5:30 A.M., and are not allowed to lie down without permission.
3. More benches out of doors for the benefit of the inmates.
4. A separate room for the dying (it having been urged by both the
physician and superintendent that the cries of dying patients often
disturbed a whole ward for several nights).
5. More privacy for women in bathing (and it will, perhaps, shock your
readers, as it did the writer, that one of the commissioners affirmed
and repeated that he did not consider this necessary).
6. Another nurse at Long Island, where Miss O'Brian has charge of
fifty-two sick women and where there is no bath-room.
7. Another nurse at the Main Institution Building on Rainsford Island,
where the laundry-matron has charge of forty-two sick women in addition
to her other duties, and with no assistance except what is given her by
inmates.