LONG ISLAND COLLEGE HOSPITAL, BROOKLYN
In July, 1862, one hundred and twenty-five patients from the Army
of the Potomac were sent to the Long Island College Hospital. No
adequate preparation had been made to provide for these sick men.
Through the press a public call was sent out for volunteers. Many
ladies and gentlemen at once offered to help care for the sick, and
to supply food for their emaciated bodies.
An endorsement of the distinguished physician of Romson Street, Dr.
Burge, made me quite happy by affording me the privilege of helping
to care for the soldiers in our city.
Among the large number of our best Brooklyn people to volunteer their
help and support was our saintly Mrs. Richard Manning, who continued
her ministration throughout the long duration of the war, and for
many years after gave substantial help to the destitute families
of soldiers; and also Mrs. Anna C. Field, chief organizer and
president of the Woman’s Club, as well as of the Woman’s Suffragist
Association. Both of these clubs celebrated, during the spring of
1909, in the new Brooklyn Academy of Music, the fortieth anniversary
of their organization. I believe that, in modern Brooklyn, no
other woman has done so much, in her long life of benevolence and
charity, as this Mother of Brooklyn Clubs, for the elevation and
encouragement of women especially in ethics and literature.
[Illustration: MRS. ANNA C. FIELD]
Watches of four hours each during the day were assigned to the women,
and at night the same number of hours were allotted to men volunteers.
Owing to the astonishing liberality of the citizens of Brooklyn, the
hospital donations seemed like a great cornucopia overflowing the
larders of the improvised kitchen. Tender, motherly care, combined
with the best of diet, at once restored many a poor, hungry homesick
boy. Most of them recovered and returned to their regiments or were
sent home.
[Illustration: ALLAN FOOTE]
My first patient was a bright, cheerful young man, Allan Foote, of
Michigan, who had been dangerously wounded by a shot that passed
through the left lung and out at his back. Such wounds were then
supposed to be fatal. He was, however, convalescent, and later
was discharged. When he returned to his home in Michigan he again
enlisted, raised a company, and went out once more to the front
as captain. This time he served till the end of the war, when he
returned to his native State safe and well.
A lady, wishing to say something flattering of him to a visitor,
remarked: “Why, he was shot right in his back.” Seeing the boy wince
at this innocent imputation, I explained that he had received that
shot in the breast while facing the enemy in battle.
Among many incidents of his early army life, Allan Foote told me the
following:
“I shall never forget his expression when my father gave his written
consent to my enlistment in the army in April of ’61, as he handed it
to me and said, while tears were running down his cheeks, ‘My son,
do your duty, die if it must be, but never prove yourself a coward.’
We can hardly imagine at what cost that was given, and it is now a
source of much satisfaction to me to know that God in His mercy so
guided me while in the service that no action of mine has ever caused
a pain to my father’s heart, and when I returned at the close of the
war he seemed as proud of my scars as I was.”
John Sherman was a remarkable case of lost identity. He was
eighteen years of age, six feet in height, with broad shoulders and
a Washingtonian head, and seemed like some great prone statue as
he lay perfectly helpless but for one hand,--a gentle fair-haired
boy to whom we became much attached. He was evidently refined, and
perfectly clear on religious and political subjects. Though without
a wound he had been completely paralyzed by concussion caused by a
cannon. He could take only infants’ food and drank milk, which was
all the nourishment he could retain. The mystery was that he claimed
to come from Cattaraugus County, N. Y., but when I wrote letters to
every possible locality, nothing could be learned of such a boy; nor
could the officers of his regiment trace him during this time. Some
scamp who claimed to come from his town, was admitted through the
carelessness of the hospital attendants, and so deceived the poor
boy that he gave him ninety dollars army pay just received, to send
home to his father. Of course the scamp was never heard of again.
My theory is that he enlisted under an assumed name and town, and
had, after the concussion, forgotten his real name and identity. He
was sent to the Fifty-second Street hospital, where I saw him a year
later, walking alone and quite well,--a finely developed physical
form. Though he knew me, he held to his old statement. Later he was
cruelly persuaded to ask for a discharge which left him homeless,
with no refuge but the poor house.
Soldiers’ homes were then unknown; and I fear that, at least for a
while, he was cared for as a pauper. About this time I went to the
“field work” and lost sight of him, though I have often wondered what
his fate has been.
A miserably thin, gaunt boy, whom we knew as “Say,” came under my
observation. He was never satisfied, though he ate enormously, and
whenever we passed through his ward he invariably shouted: “Say! ye
ain’t got no pie nor cake, nor cheese, nor nuthin’, hev ye?” When he
reached home, his father, a farmer, sent to the hospital the largest
cheese I ever saw. This the men all craved; but it was a luxury
denied them by the doctors. Patients often had it smuggled in. One
poor fellow was found dead, one morning, with a package of cheese
under his pillow.
As the “L. I. C. H.” was a city hospital, emergency and other cases
were often brought in. A pathetic case was that of a little boy about
six years old, who had been run over by a street car. As he lay,
pale and mangled, awaiting the time to have his leg amputated, his
mother, in broken English, crooned and mourned over the unconscious
child, saying, “Ach, mine liddle poy, he will nefer run mit odder
poys in the street and haf not any more good times.” I saw that the
child would not live through the operation, and tried to comfort the
poor mother while it was going on. When the mutilated, stark little
form was returned to her, her grief knew no bounds, though she still
believed he would revive.
In another ward poor Isaac was slowly dying of dysentery, gasping for
a drink of cool water, which the rules of the profession at that day
denied to such patients. Day after day he lay helpless, while a large
water cooler dripped constantly day and night before his feverish
eyes and parched body.
One day he called to me and said: “Won’t you please sit on my cot so
I can rest my knees against your back? They are so tired and I can’t
hold them up,”--poor fleshless bones that had no weight. Somewhat
relieved while I sat there he went on: “Now, Miss Smith, you think I
am dying, don’t you?”
[Illustration: ADELAIDE W. SMITH, 1863]
“Well, Isaac,” I replied hesitatingly, “we fear you are.”
Then with all the strength of his poor skeleton body, he exclaimed,
“O then, give me a drink of water that I may die easier. You know I
am dying, so it can do no harm.”
Could I refuse a dying man a drink of water, even in the face of
orders? He wanted “just a pint.” Watching my chance I went quickly
to the cooler and brought a glass of cool water. With unnatural
strength he raised himself and, reaching out for the glass, grasped
it and swallowed the water with one great gulp. Then returning the
empty glass he cried: “There, that was just half! O, give me the
other half.” This I did, rather fearfully. After greedily drinking
the water he dropped back with a sigh of relief, saying--“Now I can
die easy.” I arranged quietly with my patients in the ward so that he
could have water as long as he lived; but not many days after I found
his empty cot.
The hospital, at that time, was little known, being quite obscured
under the limitations of two conservative, retrogressive old doctors,
who showed no favor or sympathy for the sick men, and seemed to see
them only as probable “subjects.”
Many just protests from the kindly women workers were utterly
disregarded by these doctors. Dr. Colton, a handsome young man then
an interne, though not of age or yet graduated, found himself often
between the “upper and nether millstones” of the urgency of volunteer
workers, and the immovable, implacable heads of the hospital. Dr.
Colton, now a successful retired physician, occupies a prominent
position in this hospital which, in late years, is ranked among the
very best of Brooklyn’s institutions.
Meanwhile the people grew tired of the continual demand for supplies,
toward which the hospital contributed very little, though it drew
regularly from the government “rations” in the form of thirty-seven
cents per day for each man. Consequently public contributions became
very meagre.
Then in the autumn came ninety-one sick and wounded soldiers, who
stood--or dropped--on the grass plots surrounding the hospital while
waiting to be enrolled. A procession of grey skeletons, they were
ghastly, dirty, famished, with scarcely the semblance of men. One
of them stared at me rather sharply and, seeing that I observed it,
said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I haven’t seen a white woman before in many
months, an’ it seems good to look at you.”
It became difficult to get proper food in the hospital for the men.
Some of the volunteers, like myself, could still give their whole
time and thought gratuitously, and we continued bringing supplies
from our homes for special cases. My mother sent gallons of shell
clam juice,--the most healing of all natural tonics when boiled in
the shell,--which became popular in the hospital. My mother also
invited companies of four or five convalescents at a time to “a good
square meal,” when they always chose for their suppers, coffee,
buckwheat cakes and sausages. Two gallons of batter would become hot
cakes; and it took the combined help of the whole family and the cook
to keep them supplied; but the hungry boys were at last satisfied and
happy. I had no difficulty in obtaining passes for them, as they felt
in honor bound to return promptly to the hospital.
One poor fellow, dying of typhoid, was so irritable and profane to
the ignorant, heartless men-nurses of the hospital, that they would
not care for him during the night. Realizing that the end was near,
and feeling certain that he would otherwise die alone, I decided one
night to remain with him until his last breath. Just before he died,
even while the pallor of death overspread his face, he struck at the
nurse whom I had compelled to stay near to help him. At last the poor
dying man gasped: “Lift me up higher! higher! higher!!” We raised the
poor skeleton as high as we could reach,--and it was all over. His
family refused his body, saying, “He was no good to us in life, why
should we bury him?” It is not difficult to imagine that his home
influences had been unfavorable to the development of moral character.
Clancy, then a fine looking, kindly policeman, had waited to take me
home near morning, as he did on other occasions of this kind.
Some months later, being almost the only young woman still visiting
the hospital, I felt obliged to report to that rarely good man, Mr.
McMullen,--whose benevolence and generosity had at first brought
the patients to the hospital and to the care of the people,--the
neglect of soldiers, who were then treated like charity patients. He
immediately reported these conditions to the medical department, and
the men were removed to the government hospitals, which were by this
time systematized and in good running order.
After the patients had been transferred from the Long Island College
Hospital, I secured a pass on the steamboat Thomas P. Way, to visit
hospitals of the “Department of the East,” in charge of Surgeon
McDougall, a thorough disciplinarian, and a just, kind man.
David’s Island, on the Sound, had a finely conducted hospital, with a
diet kitchen in charge of ladies. There I saw hundreds of well-fed,
happy Confederate patients, so many, indeed, that they could not
be supplied at once with proper clothing, and so made a unique
appearance as they walked about in dressing gowns, white drawers, and
slippers. They were soon to be exchanged for our own poor skeleton
“Boys” who were coming home slowly and painfully, some dying on the
way, to be met by kindly hands and aching hearts eagerly awaiting
them.
Fort Schuyler Hospital, on the East River, was formed like a wheel,
the hub being headquarters and the spokes extending into wards for
patients. One young man of much refinement had been at one of our
home suppers, and afterwards the company made a pact that if we were
alive one year from that date we should hear each from the other.
He exclaimed--“Dead or alive, you shall hear from me!” Being a
spiritualist he believed this possible. He was sent to Fort Schuyler
and one month later died of small-pox. At the appointed date and
hour a year later, I thought of this pact and tried to put myself
in a receptive state. I did not, however, see him nor feel any
manifestation of his spirit.