[Sidenote: Support by the Nurses themselves.]
1. I believe that many head-nurses would thoroughly appreciate and
thankfully avail themselves of such a Fund.
2. I think that many nurses would do the same, and, in time, many more.
Many cannot contribute to it; many will not.
[Sidenote: Support from the Hospitals.]
3. What aid the hospitals might be disposed to give I do not know.
I rather think none at first. If the thing works and works well, I
think they would probably contribute. But it must never be forgotten
that, excepting the endowed hospitals (the financial position of St.
George’s I do not know) the London hospitals find their income scarcely
sufficient, often not sufficient, to meet their expenditure. They
cannot be expected, nor would they perhaps be justified, to curtail
the number of the sick they relieve, in order to provide for the
superannuated nurses of those sick. It is true, however, that it might
enable them to get better nurses, which is surely economy.
[Sidenote: Support from the Public in general.]
4. I do not think that much lasting public interest is likely to attend
the Fund. The interest the public has, for the last few years, taken in
hospitals has been fictitious and almost mischievous. The public can
never really know what hospitals are, nor is it feasible or desirable
that it should. What eventual good may be done in them must be done
quietly and with great patience. What good may be done among the nurses
must be done by infusing, if it may be, a higher and truer spirit of
duty, by increased discipline and protection, and by ameliorating, in
some material points, among which the aim contemplated by the Fund
ranks very high, a condition which, to the end of time, must remain
severe, rough, dangerous, and in all senses trying. In the details of
all these things, most especially in all that concerns discipline,
which involves protection, the public, with the best intentions, will
only be an obstacle, and John Bull is sadly prone to pull up anything
he plants or anything he waters, to see how it grows.
I think anything like appeals to or solicited support from the public
might, in various ways, seriously embarrass the Superintendent of a
very difficult and a very important though, at the same time, a very
humble branch of Her Majesty’s Service. I should be very anxious to
avoid this: it would be perpetuating the evils of publicity, and
sacrificing the greater good for the lesser.
[Sidenote: Necessity of Advice.]
5. In conclusion I again submit that it would be desirable to ascertain
from the hospital authorities above mentioned, and if possible from
three or four able and honest men accustomed to business, their opinion
as to the scope and details of this plan. In matters of spirit and of
discipline we should probably rely on other judgment; but these are
matters of business; and in which, without binding ourselves to follow,
it seems most important to obtain and to weigh, the opinions of men
long conversant with business.
_January 23, 1858._