[Sidenote: Payments for Children.]
IV. As to payments for children, whether on apprenticeship or at
death:--Upon the whole, after much anxious thought, I think it
undesirable to encourage mothers, as such. This is one of the many
points, as to hospitals, where theories and experience differ much from
each other.
[Sidenote: Reasons against the last Form of Aid.]
A very large proportion of nurses are mothers, often widows, with
large families, whom they support and put to service out of their
wages, too often eked out by improper means, _i. e._, bribes and petty
dishonesty. Many of these women are moral, sober, industrious, and
doubly anxious to retain their places, on account of their children;
still there are serious embarrassments in employing them. The wages
of hospital nurses are not and never can be enough to supply a proper
support for children, in addition to the support the mothers ought
themselves to have. Consequently when children are in whole or in part
lodged, fed, clothed, “educated,” and put to service out of the £50
a-year of the head-nurse, or out of the 12_s._ a-week of the nurse,
the mother either stints herself of proper food, proper strong drink
(we deal with practice not with theory), proper warm clothing, for the
children’s sake, or she supplies the deficiency by improper means. If
the nurse cannot afford to live well and abstains from dishonesty, one
of two things infallibly happens--either she takes to drink, as the
fallacious support of an exhausted frame, or her strength fails and
she breaks down, after a few months’, sometimes a few years’ struggle.
When once she has taken to drink, one of two things invariably follows
(dishonesty may be presumed to ensue upon, though it often does not
precede habits of drink); she is or becomes unguarded, and is soon
found out, and sinks into the miserable second and far too numerous
class of characterless hospital nurses, unless drink shortly finishes
her; or, in the other case, she is cautious and guarded--she then
becomes sly, dishonest, and thoroughly venal; she extorts gifts and
takes bribes from her patients and their friends--and the friends of
hospital patients, like others, are of various kinds; she commits
constant acts of petty but often most dangerous dishonesty, possibly
remaining an efficient and clever nurse, sometimes a favourite
nurse; and, so far as regards the crime which has taken the name of
immorality, a moral woman. A certain proportion of nurses are all the
above, excepting drink; for though, almost without exception, every
nurse who drinks takes bribes, some take bribes and do not drink.
Of course widows and unmarried women who are not mothers do the above
things; but there cannot be a doubt of the additional and terrible
temptation to women burdened with children, to make money in various
ways out of their patients. Even in the most favourable cases (and it
is to be feared they are few) where the real good principle of the
mother restrains her from venality, there are still serious objections.
The time when a nurse can go out must necessarily be comparatively very
limited. The time that is enough for the moderate demands of friendship
or acquaintance is miserably insufficient for the natural yearnings
of the mother, especially if the children are young and helpless. The
consequence is that, either openly or by stealth, she goes to them
or has them brought to her at unallowed times; or, if the rules of
the hospital are lax as to visitors, the children are perpetually
with her: and let it be remembered, that the head-nurse’s room or
rooms are usually at the entrance of the ward, that being infinitely
the best place. It is difficult to say whether such a practice is
most objectionable as regards the children, or the patients, or the
hospital; and whether it is most objectionable when the children are
young, or adolescent, or grown up. It is objectionable in all and every
one of these cases. And no less objectionable is it in the case of the
assistant-nurse, who where the rules are lax will receive her children
either in the ward or in the nurses’ kitchen; or where they are strict,
will have the children come about the hospital and will meet them on
the sly.
These things enter immensely, minute as they seem, into the discipline
of wards and of the hospital; and discipline means a great deal.
Sanitary objects.
[Sidenote: Sanitary Objects.]
[Sidenote: To discourage admission of women physically unfit.]
A good many nurses enter hospital service who are quite unfit for it.
Often consumptive and ruptured women, those suffering from piles or
prolapsus, &c., present themselves, are admitted, struggle on for a
time, and break down with or without taking to drink. Undoubtedly, none
but strong healthy women should enter hospital service; the work will
wear them out quite soon enough, and some of the above complaints are
particularly liable to follow the work.
Here again men of business must advise: the fund ought to have some
efficient though not infallible security as to the average good health
on joining of its members. Life Insurance rules as to this would be to
the point.
Believe me, all these things are important.
Moral objects.
[Sidenote: Moral Objects attainable.]
The most difficult part of a difficult thing, only perhaps it is at the
same time the most important.
[Sidenote: Need of Certificates.]
I. I think that every nurse, before joining the Fund, should produce
a certificate from her matron, stating her to be a respectable woman.
In plain words, for the word respectable is certainly capable of most
wondrous extension, the certificate should state her to be, in the
matron’s belief, and to the best of her knowledge, a chaste woman, and
should specify whether she be spinster, wife, or widow. In either of
the latter cases, the marriage certificate, and in the last that of the
husband’s death, should accompany the matron’s.
The matron’s certificate should, I consider, also state her to be
sober; and it would be a question whether it should not also state her
to have served for not less than a year in the hospital. The vagabond
class are a terrible drag upon the whole order; and some of these
might, from the novelty of the thing, be disposed to join it at first.
II. An important question would be: Should the matron’s certificate
be renewed every year, and should the continuance of the nurse’s
membership depend on its production? Men of business must advise as to
this: I am quite unversed as to the details of Provident Societies.
So far as regards the contributor’s own money, the contract once
entered into, must certainly be open to no further question; unless
there has been fraud in the preliminary statement on which it was
based. With regard to any _assistance_ that may be given the question
is different.
III. The preliminary certificate I do consider very important, and the
subsequent ones, if they can be required.
[Sidenote: Hospitals are not places for Penitents.]
Until the hospitals are swept of the many mothers who are not wives,
now unhappily to be found in them, no real good can be done. Hospitals
are not, and never can be, places for “penitents;” and they are about
the most dangerous places where sham penitents can be.
This is precisely what so many people of very different kinds cannot
or will not see; some from ignorance, some from knowledge, some from
the vague, silly, kind feeling which does such mischief when exerted on
practical matters.