No one ought to undertake a matter of duty of this kind without first
obtaining the consent of the War Office to five conditions.
1. That every month, each of her sub-Superintendents shall furnish
her with an abstract of the requisitions made by her on the Purveyor,
whether for Nurses’ consumption, or for that of Patients, and that she
furnish the War Office with an abstract of these. It is then the part
of the Purveyor to disprove her accounts, instead of its being, as
before, her part to disprove his.
2. That it be made a point of honour, not of grace, with the War
Department, to submit to her any Report, confidential[2] or otherwise,
made concerning the Female Nursing Staff; a condition, without which it
would be impossible to have respectable women in the Military Service.
3. That the powers of the Superintendent-General shall be strictly
defined, and put in “General Orders” in the first place, and not in
the last, in order that there may not be the useless and endless
correspondence which there was in the first Superintendent-General’s
case (and for what?).
4. That the Superintendent-General have the power of communicating
directly with the War Department; and that her Money-Accounts be sent
in by her directly to that Department.
5. That it be made a point of honour that the Medical Officers
communicate to the Superintendent-General, or Local Superintendent, any
complaint they may have against the Nurses for disobedience.
In March 1856 the following appeared in “General Orders.” Had it but
been seventeen months earlier how much it might have saved![3] The
definition of the Superintendent-General’s powers and duties, therein
contained, is all that is wanted to prevent irregularities disastrous
to the Service.