THE ACCOUNT I WROTE--BRIDGET--AN OFFICIAL VISIT TO THE LEPERS.
When I arrived home from the asylum, I went at once to find my husband,
to tell him all that I had seen, and ask him to help me in doing
something for the lepers. He was out, unfortunately, and, no one else
being in the house, I tried to interest my little boy in the fate of
the poor leper child whom I had just seen. His baby brain could not
grasp the full extent of my meaning; but he understood enough to offer
his scrap-book and promise me his musical-box and other things, all of
which were duly handed over to the poor little leper next day.
I could do nothing all day but brood over what I had seen. In the
evening, with the incidents fresh on my mind, I sat down and wrote
an account of them for our paper. This raised for me the anger of the
officials in charge of the place, who had accepted the responsibility
of caring for the lepers. I described exactly what I saw and smelt.
If I had not written the truth, Brother John, who was with me, would
have corrected my statements when appealed to in the matter, instead
of publicly corroborating them, as he afterwards did. My husband
thoroughly entered into, and appreciated, my wish to relieve the
sufferers, and we presented ourselves next day at the asylum with
offerings of fruit, flowers, fans, scent, biscuits, jam, clean linen
for bandages, sheets, underclothing, and as many other things as I
could think of. These things were tearfully received by the poor
women, including Bridget, whom I now had an opportunity of seeing for
the first time. Mr. McGuire was not pleased with me. He said they had
all they required, and informed me, when I told the women I should
try and get sufficient money to allow them a rupee a week each for
extra washing, etc., that the Jewess had money in the bank, and that
my money was not required. I happened to know about this money, and
the use for what it was being kept, so allowed his remarks to pass
in silence. Bridget was a strange and weird sight when I first saw
her. She wore a short black petticoat, reaching a little below her
knees, and a soiled cotton jacket that had once been white. She had
evidently gone without a bath for a long time, for her face and neck
were dirty. Her bare feet were swollen, but there were no leprous
sores on her, nor any distortion of her fingers or toes. As she stood
towering above me, a tall, gaunt, starved-looking woman, I noticed a
wild, restless look in her eyes which appeared to me to be a sort of
challenge. On a table near her were some old loaves of bread from which
all the crumb had been eaten, leaving nothing but the outside crust,
that, from want of teeth, she had been unable to eat. There was also
a little sour milk in a bowl. I inquired and found that her diet was
bread, milk and a little coarse sugar, and that she begged scraps of
curry, or _dall_ (lentil) and rice from the inmates. It appears that at
the Calcutta Leper Asylum there is a milk diet, on which Bridget was
placed, and which consisted of twenty-two ounces of bread and a quart
of milk daily, and a little sugar, and a meat diet; the latter being
sufficient for an adult, but the former was not. Bridget had her choice
of the two diets, and, as she was loth to sacrifice her milk, which she
would have to do if she chose the meat diet, elected to take the milk
diet. The rules of the place were not sufficiently elastic to admit of
a milk diet varied with meat. Bridget, therefore, in order to keep body
and soul together, was obliged to beg food from the other inmates. She
replied, when I asked her why she had not taken a bath, that there was
no place in which she could bathe. Outside, there was a brick building
that had evidently been constructed for the use of native women, and
without reference to the requirements of Europeans. This building was
divided into three small compartments, in each of which there was a
tap for water and a drain for its outlet. There were no doors of any
kind. I must here explain that the tap, rather than the more convenient
bathing-tub, was selected in the interests of sanitation. The floor was
of stone or concrete, and the wall in front, which shut off the bathing
compartments from view, was open at both ends. My lady readers will
understand how repugnant it is to the feelings of white women to bathe
in a place in which they are not entirely secure from observation, even
from that of their own sex; a condition which is not obtainable at the
Calcutta Leper Asylum. Bridget, having been brought up in Ireland with
some ideas of decency, would not take a bath under these conditions; so
went without.
After making this discovery, I could not rest until I had written
a letter to Mr. Lambert, the Commissioner of Police, asking for an
interview. He granted my request, and appointed a time for me to call
at his office. I found him a typical official, the performance of
whose routine duties allowed him but little scope for the exercise
of personal sympathy. I told him of the state of the Leper Asylum
exactly as I had found it. He gave me little satisfaction, but ended
by remarking that he and Mr. Justice Prinsep, who was President of the
District Charitable Society, were going down to the Leper Asylum on
the following morning, and that he would be glad if I would then shew
them the dirty sheets described in my article which had appeared in our
paper. I was too much awed by Mr. Lambert’s official manner to point
out to him the futility of such a quest; for the most rigid believer
in the artlessness of human nature would have known that the sheets
destined to meet the forthcoming scrutiny, after all that had been
written and read about their previous state, would be characterised, as
far as possible, by scrupulous purity. However, being in a position to
be thankful for the smallest mercy, I accepted Mr. Lambert’s offer, and
drove down to the asylum, with my husband, on the following morning.
Mr. Prinsep, who, I believe, had never been to the place before,
appeared to be amused on seeing me, and was little inclined to treat
the inquiry seriously. Owing to my article, no doubt, the asylum had
undergone a thorough cleaning; the sheets were clean, and the place
tidied up. Mr. Lambert, without a smile on his face, turned to us
and said that he failed to see any cause for complaint, and that the
place was clean. At that moment I saw a dying leper lying on a filthy
bed, the sheets of which were covered with spots of blood and matter.
I pointed this out to Mr. Lambert, who asked the man how often his
sheets were changed. “We have a clean sheet every eight or nine days,”
replied the man in English. I had given the time as once a week in our
paper, so it was even longer than I had stated. When we got outside,
Mr. Prinsep joined us, and we went to Bridget’s room. I asked Mr.
Prinsep if he considered 22 ounces of bread, a quart of thin milk, and
4 ounces of coarse sugar a day sufficient for her? He turned to me and
said he certainly thought it plenty. I could not help looking at his
portly and well-nourished form, and comparing it with that of the thin,
starved-looking old Irishwoman, standing at the door and offering a
bowl of well-watered milk for his inspection.
My readers may imagine that in the face of so much opposition, I was
beginning to lose heart. While these persons were inspecting the tank
in which the lepers’ clothes were washed, I went into Daisy’s room,
and gathering the three English-speaking lepers--Bella, Daisy, and
the Jewess--around me, I begged of them to speak out and tell these
gentlemen of their need of a female attendant, of washstands, and a
place in which they could bathe in private, as well as of the bad food
of which they had complained to me. The poor things said they would,
but when the three stern men stood before them, and Mr. Lambert asked,
in his severest police tones, what complaints they had to make, the
miserable leper women crouched down on the floor and were silent! What
“complaints” dared they make? Did they not know that such men possessed
the power of turning them, diseased and penniless as they were, into
the streets at any moment? The horror and disgrace of a European leper
woman begging in the streets was an idea that they could never have
tolerated--anything rather than that. There is a certain amount of
sympathy accorded to native lepers, but Europeans afflicted in like
manner are regarded more as wild beasts than as human beings. Could
they have uttered a word of complaint under the circumstances? Of
course not. To me, as an Englishwoman, the sight of these three leper
women, cowering before the very men who posed before the world as their
friends and benefactors, was one that roused every feeling within me
to rebellion! However, after all, I was only regarded as a meddlesome
unit, whose blame or praise was a matter of utter indifference to
persons of position and standing; though who knows but that a merciful
God in Heaven, the Father of the fatherless and afflicted, to whom
all hearts are opened, did not see and pass judgment on one and all of
us who stood before Him that day? It may have been this thought which
caused me to bridle my tongue and refrain from giving utterance to
strong words. Anyhow, I did manage to control my feelings sufficiently
to enable me to speak calmly to Mr. Lambert, to point out to him the
bathing-place, and to ask him, as a man who had daughters of his
own, if he considered it a fitting bath-room for European women. Mr.
Lambert, looking into the bathing-place, saw a native woman taking her
bath, and retired in confusion. I commented on the unprotected state of
the European women, who were obliged to bathe in this place, which was
exposed in an enclosure where native male dressers, washermen, cooks
and others were in the habit of walking, and suggested the desirability
of having a door placed in one of the bathing partitions, which should
be supplied with a bathing-tub, and reserved for the use of European
women, who are unaccustomed to bathing like natives. I was informed
that such additions were altogether superfluous, and that if the ends
of the outer wall were rounded or curved in, instead of being straight
as they then were, all requirements as to the privacy and comfort of
the bathing arrangements would then be met. This was done, but up to
the time of writing, no door or bath-tub has been provided for the use
of Daisy, Bella, or the Jewess, who have to make their daily ablutions
under the tap as best they can. I may mention that there were no
arrangements at all in this asylum for giving the patients a warm bath.