Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison was born on January 15th, 1832. She was the
youngest daughter, and the youngest child but one, of the Rev. Mark
Pattison, who was for many years Rector of Hauxwell, near Richmond, in
Yorkshire. She inherited from her father, who was of a Devonshire
family, that finely proportioned and graceful figure which she always
maintained; and from her mother, who was the daughter of a banker in
Richmond, those lovely features which drew forth the admiration of
everyone who had the pleasure of knowing her.
Her father was a good and sincere man. He was thoroughly upright and
strict.
Dora and her sister, like a thousand other country parsons' daughters,
were of the utmost use in their father's Yorkshire parish. A French
gentleman who had lived a while in England and in the country, said to
me one day:
"Your young ladies astound me. They are angels of mercy. They wear no
distinguishing habit; one does not see their wings, yet they fly
everywhere, and everywhere bring grace and love and peace--in my
country such a thing would be impossible."
These Pattison girls were for ever saving their pocket money to give
it away, and they made it a rule to mend and remake their old frocks,
so as not to have to buy new ones out of their allowance for clothes,
so as to have more to give. Even their dinners they would reserve for
poor people, and content themselves with bread and cheese. "Giving to
others instead of spending on themselves seems to have been the rule
and delight of their lives."
A pretty story is told of Dorothy at this time. A schoolboy in the
village, who was especially attached to her, fell ill of rheumatic
fever. The boy's one longing was to see "Miss Dora" again, but she was
abroad on the Continent. As he grew worse and worse, he constantly
prayed that he might live long enough to see her. On the day on which
she was expected, he sat up on his pillows intently listening, and at
last, long before anyone else could hear a sound of wheels, he
exclaimed: "There she is!" and sank back. She went to him at once, and
nursed him till he died.
Her beauty was very great: large brilliant, brown eyes, full red lips,
a firm chin and a finely cut profile; her hair dark, and slightly
curling, waved all over her head; and the remarkable beauty and
delicacy of her colouring and complexion, added to the liveliness of
her expression, made her a fascinating creature to behold. Her father
always called her "Little Sunshine."
But the most remarkable feature about her was to be found in her inner
being. A will, which no earthly power could subdue, enabled her to
accomplish an almost superhuman work; yet at times it was to her a
faculty that brought her into difficulties. She was twenty-nine before
she was able to find real scope for her energies, and then she took a
bold step--answered an advertisement from a clergyman for a lady to
take the village school. Her mother had died in 1861, and she
considered herself free from duties that bound her to her home. Her
father did not relish the step she took, but acquiesced. She went to
Woolston, and remained there three years, during which time she won
the hearts, not of the children only, but of their parents as well.
She had to live alone in a cottage, and do everything for her self;
but the people never for a moment doubted she was a real lady, and
always treated her with great respect.
Not thinking a little village school sufficient field for her
energies, she resolved to join a nursing sisterhood at Redcar, in
Yorkshire. The life was not quite suited to her strong will, but it
did her good. She there learned how to make beds and to cook. At first
she literally sat down and cried when the beds which she had just put
in order were all pulled to pieces by some superior authority, who did
not approve of the method in which they were made. But it was a useful
lesson for her after life in a hospital. She was there till the early
part of 1865, and then was sent to Walsall to help at a small cottage
hospital, which had already been established for more than a year.
Walsall, though not in the "Black Country," is in a busy manufacturing
district, chiefly of iron. At the time when Sister Dora went there it
contained a population of 35,000 inhabitants. It is now connected with
Birmingham by almost continuous houses and pits and furnaces.
As fresh coal and iron pits were being opened in the district around
Walsall, accidents became more frequent, and it was found
impracticable to send those injured to Birmingham, which was seven
miles distant; Accordingly, in 1863, the Town Council invited the
Redcar Society to start a hospital there. When the Sister who had
begun the work fell ill, Sister Dora was sent in her place, and almost
directly caught small-pox from the outpatients. She was very ill, and
even in her delirium showed the bent of her mind by ripping her sheets
into strips to serve as bandages.
When the cottage hospital--which was the second of its kind in
England--was opened, the system of voluntary nursing was unknown; the
only voluntary nurses heard of then being those who had gone out to
the Crimea with Miss Florence Nightingale. Therefore a good deal of
misunderstanding was the result; but in the course of time people
began to judge the institution by its results. But Sister Dora, by her
frank, open manner, disarmed suspicion, while the sublime eloquence of
noble deeds silenced tongues, and won for the hospital the confidence
of the public, and for herself the admiration and affection of the
people.
In 1866 she had a serious illness, brought on by exposure to wet and
cold. She would come home from dressing wounds in the cottages, wet
through and hot with hurrying along the streets, to find a crowd of
outpatients awaiting her return at the hospital, and she would attend
to them in total disregard of herself, and allow her wet clothes to
dry on her.
This neglect occurred once too often; a chill settled on her, and for
three weeks she was dangerously ill. Then it was that the people of
Walsall began to realise what she was, and the door of the hospital
was besieged by poor people come to inquire how their "Sister Dora"
was.
The hospital had moved men of every shade of politics, and every form
of religious belief, to the work, and there have been passages in its
history not pleasant to remember, but not one of these in the
remotest degree involved Sister Dora. On the contrary, her presence
and counsel always brought light and peace, and lifted every question
into a higher sphere. "Ask Sister Dora," it used to be said. "Had we
not better send for Sister Dora" some member would exclaim out of the
fog of contention. Thereupon she would appear; and many well remember
how calmly self-possessed, and clear-sighted she would stand--never
sit down. Indeed, there were those who worked with her fifteen years
who never saw her seated; she would stand, usually with her hand on
the back of the chair which had been placed for her, every eye
directed to her; nor was it ever many moments before she had grasped
the whole question, and given her opinion just as clearly and simply
and straight to the purpose as any opinion given to the sufferers in
the wards. Nor was she ever wrong; nor did she ever fail of her
purpose with the committee. No committeemen ever questioned or
differed from Sister Dora, yet in her was the charm of unconsciousness
of power or superiority and the impression left was of there being no
feeling of pleasure in her, other than the triumph of the right.
In 1867 the cottage hospital had to be abandoned, as erysipelas broke
out and would not be expelled. The wards were evidently impregnated
with malignant germs to such an extent that the committee resolved to
build a new hospital in a better situation.
Sister Dora's work became more engrossing when this larger field was
opened for it; the men's beds were constantly full, and even the
women's ward was hardly ever entirely empty.
Just at this period an epidemic of small-pox broke out in Walsall,
and all the energies of Sister Dora were called into play. She visited
the cottages where the patients lay, and nursed them or saw to their
being supplied with what they needed; whilst at the same time carrying
on her usual work at the hospital.
One night she was sent for by a poor man who was dying of what she
called "black-pox," a violent form of small-pox. She went at once, and
found him in the last extremity. All his relations had fled, and a
neighbour alone was with him. When Sister Dora found that only one
small piece of candle was left in the house, she gave the woman some
money, begging her to go and buy some means of light whilst she stayed
with the man. She sat on by his bed, but the woman, who had probably
spent the money at the public house, never returned; and after some
little while the dying man raised himself up in bed with a last
effort, saying, "Sister, kiss me before I die." She took him, all
covered as he was with the loathsome disease, into her arms and kissed
him, the candle going out almost as she did so, leaving them in total
darkness. He implored her not to leave him while he lived, although he
might have known she would never do that. So she sat through the
night, till the early dawn breaking in revealed that the man was dead.
When the bell at the head of her bed rang at night she rose at once,
saying to herself, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee!" Indeed,
she loved to think that she was ministering to her Lord in the person
of His poor and sick.
Here is a letter from a former patient in the hospital, from which
only a short extract can be made:
"I had not been there above a week when Sister Dora found me a little
bell, as there was not one to my bed, and she said, 'Enoch, you must
ring this bell when you want sister.' This little bell did not have
much rest, for whenever I heard her step or the tinkle of her keys in
the hall I used to ring my bell, and she would call out, 'I'm coming,
Enoch,' which she did, and would say, 'What do you want?' I often used
to say, 'I don't know, Sister,' not really knowing what I did want.
She'd say, 'Do you want your pillows shaken up, or do you want moving
a little?' which she'd do, whatever it was, and say, 'Do you feel
quite cosey now?' 'Yes, Sister.' Then she would start to go into the
other ward, but very often before she could get through the door I'd
call her back and say my pillow wasn't quite right, or that my leg
wanted moving a little. She would come and do it, whatever it was, and
say, 'Will that do?' 'Yes, Sister.' Then she'd go about her work, but
at the very next sound of her step my bell would ring, and so often as
my bell rang Sister would come; and some of the other patients would
often remark that I should wear that little bell out or Sister, and
she'd say, 'Never mind, for I like to hear it, and it's never too
often.' And it rang so often that I've heard Sister say that she often
dreamt she heard my little bell and started up in a hurry to find it
was a dream."
Sister Dora said once to a friend, who was engaging a servant for the
hospital:
"Tell her this is not an ordinary house, or even a hospital. I want
her to understand that all who serve here, in whatever capacity, ought
to have one rule, _love for God_, and then, I need not say, love for
their work."
She spoke often and with intense earnestness, on the duty, the
necessity, of prayer. It was literally true that she never touched a
wound without raising her heart to God and entreating him to bless the
means employed. As years glided away, she became able almost to fulfil
the Apostle's command: "Pray without ceasing." And her prayers were
animated by the most intense faith--an absolutely unshaken conviction
of their efficacy. It may truly be said that those who pray become
increasingly more sure of the value of prayer. They find that,
whatever men may say about the reign of law and the order of nature,
earnest prayer does bring an answer, often in a marvellous manner. The
praying man or woman is never shaken in his or her trust in the
efficacy of prayer. She firmly held to the supernatural power, put
into the hands of men by means of the weapon of prayer; and the
practical faithlessness in this respect of the world at large was an
ever-increasing source of surprise and distress to her.
Since her death, in commemoration of her labours at Walsall, a very
beautiful statue has been there erected to her, and on the pedestal
are bas-reliefs representing incidents in her life there. One of these
illustrates a terrible explosion that took place in the Birchett's
Iron Works, on Friday, October 15, 1875, whereby eleven men were so
severely burnt that only two survived. All the others died after their
admission into the hospital. It came about thus: The men were at work
when water escaped from the "twyer" and fell upon the molten iron in
the furnace and was at once resolved into steam that blew out the
front of the furnace, and also the molten iron, which fell upon the
men. Some suffered frightful agonies, but the shock to the nervous
systems of others had stupefied them. The sight and the smell were
terrible. Ladies who volunteered their help could not endure it, and
were forced to withdraw, some not getting beyond the door of the ward.
But Sister Dora was with the patients incessantly till they died,
giving them water, bandaging their wounds, or cutting away the sodden
clothes that adhered to the burnt flesh. Some lingered on for ten
days, but in all this time she never deserted the fetid atmosphere of
the ward, never went to bed.
She had so much to do with burns that she became specially skilful in
treating them. Children terribly burnt or scalded were constantly
brought to the hospital; often men came scalded from a boiler, or by
molten metal. She dressed their wounds herself, but, if possible,
always sent the patients to be tended at home, where she would visit
them and regularly dress their wounds, rather than have the wards
tainted by the effluvium from the burns. Her treatment of burnt
children merits quotation.
"If a large surface of the body was burnt, or if the child seemed
beside itself with terror, she did not touch the wounds themselves,
but only carefully excluded the air from them by means of cotton wool
and blankets wrapped around the body. She put hot bottles and flannel
to the feet, and, if necessary, ice to the head. Then she gave her
attention to soothing and consoling the shocked nerves--a state which
she considered to be often a more immediate source of danger to the
life of the child than the actual injuries. She fed it with milk and
brandy, unless it violently refused food, when she would let it alone
until it came round, saying that force, or anything which involved
even a slight further shock to the system, was worse than useless.
Sometimes, of course, the fatal sleep of exhaustion, from which there
was no awakening, would follow; but more often than not food was
successfully administered, and after a few hours, Sister Dora, having
gained the child's confidence, could dress the wounds without fear of
exciting the frantic terror which would have been the result of
touching them at first."
Children Sister Dora dearly loved; her heart went out to them with
infinite tenderness, and she was even known to sleep with a burnt baby
on each arm. What that means only those know who have had experience
of the sickening smell arising from burns.
Once a little girl of nine was brought into the hospital so badly
burnt that it was obvious she had not many hours to live. Sister Dora
sat by her bed talking to her of Jesus Christ and His love for little
children, and of the blessed home into which he would receive them.
The child died peacefully, and her last words were: "Sister, when you
come to heaven, I'll meet you at the gates with a bunch of flowers."
One of the most heroic of her many heroic acts was taking charge of
the small-pox hospital when a second epidemic broke out.
Mr. S. Welsh says: "In the spring of 1875 there was a second
visitation of the disease, and fears were entertained that the results
would be as bad as during the former visitation. One morning Sister
Dora came to me and said, 'Do you know, I have an idea that if some
one could be got to go to the epidemic hospital in whom the people
have confidence, they would send their friends to be nursed, the
patients would be isolated, and the disease stamped out.'" This was
because a prejudice was entertained against the new small-pox
hospital, and those who had sick concealed the fact rather than send
them to it. "I said," continues Mr. Welsh, "'I have long been of the
opinion you have just expressed; but where are we to get a lady, in
whom the people would have confidence, to undertake the duty?'
"Her prompt reply was, 'I will go.'
"I confess the sudden announcement of her determination rather took me
by surprise, for I had no expectation of it, and not the least remote
idea that she intended to go. 'But,' I said, 'who will take charge of
the hospital if you go there?'
"'Oh,' she replied, 'I can get plenty of ladies to come there, but
none will go to the epidemic. And', she added, by way of reconciling
me to her view, 'it will only be for a short time.'
"'But what if you were to take the disease and die?' I inquired.
"'Then,' she added, in her cheery way, 'I shall have died in the path
of duty, and, you know, I could not die better.'
"I knew it was no use pointing out at length the risk she ran, for
where it was a case of saving others, _self_ with her was no
consideration. I tried to dissuade her on other grounds.... A few days
later I was in company with the doctor of the hospital, who was also
medical officer of health, and who, as such, had charge of the
epidemic hospital, near to which we were at the time. He said, 'Do you
know where Sister Dora is?' 'At the hospital I suppose,' was my reply.
'No,' he rejoined, 'she is over there!' pointing to the epidemic
hospital....
"The people as soon as they knew Sister Dora was in charge, had no
misgiving about sending their relatives to be nursed, and the result
was as she had predicted; the cases were brought in as soon as it was
discovered that patients had the disease, and the epidemic was
speedily stamped out."
She had, however, a hard time of it there, as she lacked assistants.
Two women were sent from the work-house, but they proved of little
use. The porter, an old soldier, was attentive and kind in his way,
but he always went out "on a spree" on Saturday nights, and did not
return till late on Sunday evening. When the work-house women failed
her she was sometimes alone with her patients, and these occasionally
in the delirium of small-pox.
It was not till the middle of August, 1875, that the last small-pox
patient departed from the hospital, and she was able to return to her
original work.
One of the bas-reliefs on her monument represents Sister Dora
consoling the afflicted and the scene depicted refers to a dreadful
colliery accident that occurred on March 14, 1872, at Pelsall, a
village rather over three miles from Walsall, by which twenty-two men
were entombed, and all perished. For several days hopes were
entertained that some of the men would be got out alive; and blankets
in which to wrap them, and restoratives, were provided, and Sister
Dora was sent for to attend the men when brought to "bank." The
following extract, from an article by a special correspondent in a
newspaper, dated Dec 10, 1872, will give some idea of Sister Dora's
connection with the event:
Out of doors the scene is weird and awful, and impresses the
mind with a peculiar gloom; for the intensity of the darkness is
heightened by the shades created by the artificial lights. Every
object, the most minute, stands out in bold relief against the
inky darkness which surrounds the landscape. On the crest of the
mound or pit-bank, the policemen, like sentinels, are walking
their rounds. The wind is howling and whistling through the
trees which form a background to the pit-bank, and the rain is
coming hissing down in sheets. In a hovel close to the pit shaft
sit the bereaved and disconsolate mourners, hoping against hope,
and watching for those who will never return. There, too, are
the swarthy sons of toil who have just returned from their
fruitless search in the mine for the dear missing ones, and are
resting while their saturated clothes are drying.
But another form glides softly from that hovel; and amid the
pelting rain, and over the rough pit-bank, and through miry
clay--now ankle deep--takes her course to the dwellings of the
mourners, for some, spent with watching, have been induced to
return to their homes. As she plods her way amid pieces of
timber, upturned wagons and fragments of broken machinery, which
are scattered about in great confusion, a "wee, wee bairn"
creeps gently to her side, and grasping her hand and looking
wistfully into her face, which is radiant with kindness and
affection, says, "Oh, Sister, do see to my father when they
bring him up the pit." Poor child! Never again would he know a
father's love, or share a father's care. She smiled, and that
smile seemed to lighten the child's load of grief, and her
promise to see to his father appeared to impart consolation to
his heavy, despairing heart.
On she glides, with a kind word or a sympathetic expression to
all. One woman, after listening to her comforting words, burst
into tears--the fountains of sorrow so long pent up seemed to
have found vent. "Let her weep," said a relative of the
unfortunate woman; "it is the first tear she has shed since the
accident has occurred, and it will do her good to cry." But who
is the good Samaritan? She is the sister who for seven years has
had the management of the nursing department in the cottage
hospital at Walsall.
This is written in too much of the "special correspondent" style to be
pleasant; nevertheless it describes what actually took place.
Mr. Samuel Welsh says: "I remember one evening I was in the hospital
when a poor man who had been dreadfully crushed in a pit was brought
in. One of his legs was so fearfully injured that it was thought it
would be necessary to amputate it. After examining the patient, the
doctor came to me in the committee-room--one door of which opened into
the passage leading to the wards and another into the hall in the
domestic portion of the building. After telling me about the patient
who had just been brought in, he said, 'Do you know Sister Dora is
very ill? So ill,' he continued, 'that I question if she will pull
through this time.' I naturally inquired what she was suffering from,
and in reply the doctor said, 'She will not take care of herself, and
is suffering from blood-poison.' He left me, and I was just trying to
solve the problem--'What shall be done? or how shall her place be
supplied if she be taken from us by death?' when I saw a spectral-like
figure gliding gently and almost noiselessly through the room from the
domestic entrance to the door leading to the wards. The figure was
rather indistinct, for it was nearly dark; and as I gazed at the
receding form, I said, 'Sister, is it you?' 'Whist!' she said, and
glided through the doorway into the wards. In a short time she
returned, and I said to her, 'Sister, the doctor has just been telling
me how ill you are--how is it you are here?' 'Ah!' replied, she 'it is
true I am very ill; but I heard the surgeons talking about amputating
that poor fellow's limb, and I wanted to see whether or not there was
a possibility of saving it, and I believe there is; and, knowing that,
I shall rest better.' So saying, she glided as noiselessly out of the
room as when she entered.
"On her recovery--which was retarded by her neglecting herself to
attend to others--she called me one day to the hall-door of the
hospital, and asked me if I thought it was going to rain. I told her I
did not think it would rain for some hours. She then told me to go
and order a cab to be ready at the hospital in half an hour. I tried
to persuade her not to venture out so soon; but it was no use--she
went; and many a time I wondered where she went to.
"About six months afterward I happened to be at a railway station, and
saw a pointsman who had been in our hospital with an injured foot, but
who, as his friends wished to have him at home, had left before his
foot was cured. I inquired how his foot was. He replied that had it
not been for Sister Dora he would have lost his foot, if not his life.
I said, 'How did she save your foot when you were not in the hospital,
and she was ill at the time you left the hospital?' 'Well,' he
replied, 'you know my foot was far from well when I left the hospital;
there was no one at our house who could see to it properly, and it
took bad ways, and one evening I was in awful pain. Oh, how I did wish
for Sister Dora to come and dress it! I felt sure she could give me
relief, but I had been told she was very ill, so I had no hope that my
earnest desire would be realised; but while I was thinking and
wishing, the bedroom door was gently opened, and a figure just like
Sister Dora glided so softly into the room that I could not hear her,
but oh! she was so pale that I began to think it must be her spirit
but when she folded the bedclothes from off my foot, I knew it was
she. She dressed my foot, and from that hour it began to improve.'
"A few days after this interview with the pointsman I was talking to
Sister Dora, and said: 'By the bye, Sister, I have found out where you
went with the cab that day.' She replied with a merry twinkle in her
eye, 'What a long time you have been finding it out!'"
Her old patients ever remembered her with gratitude. A man called
Chell, an engine-stoker, was twice in the hospital under her care,
first with a dislocated ankle, severely cut; the second time with a
leg crushed to pieces in a railway accident. It was amputated.
According to his own account he remembered nothing of the operation,
except that Sister Dora was there, and that, "When I come to after the
chloroform, she was on her knees by my side with her arm supporting my
head, and she was repeating:
"'They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
Through peril, toil and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.'
And all through the pain and trouble that I had afterward, I never
forgot Sister's voice saying those words." When she was in the
small-pox hospital, avoided by most, this man never failed to stump
away to it to see her and inquire how she was getting on.
There were, as she herself recognised, faults in the character of
Sister Dora; and yet, without these faults, problematical as it may
seem, it is doubtful whether she could have achieved all she did.
One who knew her long and intimately writes to me "A majestic
character, brimming over with sympathy, but, for lack of
self-discipline, this sympathy was impulsive and gushing. Her glorious
nature, physical and mental, was marred by undisciplined impulse. Her
nature found its congenial outlet in devoted works of mercy and love
to her fellow creatures. How far she would have done the same under
authority, I fear is a little doubtful."
Miss Twigg, who knew her well, writes me: "She was a lovable woman,
so bright and winsome. She used to come into our rather dull and sad
home (our mother died when we were quite children) after evening
service. She would nurse one of us, big as we were then, and the
others would gather round her, while she would tell us stories of her
hospital life.... She was a _real_ woman."
There is one point in Sister Dora's life to which sufficient attention
has not been paid by her biographers. It is one which the busy workers
of the present day think of too little--namely, the writing of bright,
helpful letters to any friend who is sick or in trouble. Somehow or
other she always found time for that, wrote one who knew her well, and
who contributes the following, written to a young girl who was at the
time in a spinal hospital, and who was almost a stranger to her:
MY DEAR MISS J.--I was so glad to hear from you, though I fear
it must be a trouble for you to write. I _do_ hope that you will
really have benefited by the treatment and rest. I am so glad
that the doctor is good to his "children." Such little
attentions when you are sick help to alleviate wonderfully. I
wish I could come and take a peep at you. Did Mrs. N. tell you
that she had sent us five pounds for our seaside expedition? Was
it not good of her? Oh! we shall have such a jolly time. To see
all those poor creatures drink in the sea-breezes! We have had a
very busy week of accidents and operations. It has been a
regular storm.[A] My dear, it is in such times as you are now
having that the voice of Jesus Christ can be best heard, "Come
into a desert place awhile." Know you surely that it is God's
visitation. Take home that thought, realise it: God _visiting
you_. Elizabeth was astonished that the Mother of her Lord
should visit her. We can have our Emmanuel. I can look back on
my sicknesses as the best times of my life. Don't fret about the
future. He carrieth our sicknesses and healeth our infirmities.
You know infirmity means weakness after sickness. Think of the
cheering lines of our hymn: "His touch has still its ancient
power." When I arose up from my sick bed they told me I should
never be able to enter a hospital or do work again. I was
fretting over this when a good friend came to me, and told me
only to take a day's burden and not look forward, and it was
such a help. I got up every day feeling sure I should have
strength and grace for the day's trial. May it be said of you,
dear, "They took knowledge of her that she had been with Jesus."
May He reveal Himself in all His beauty is the prayer of
Your sincere friend,
SISTER DORA.
It does not truly represent Sister Dora to dwell on her outer life,
and not look as well into that which is within, as it was the very
mainspring of all her actions, as it, in fact, made her what she was.
The same writer to the _Guardian_ gives some sentences from other
letters: "Take your cross day by day, dearie, and with Jesus Christ
bearing the other end it will not be _too_ heavy." "If we could find
Jesus, it must be on a mountain, not in the plains or smooth places."
"He went up into a mountain and taught them, saying," etc. "It is only
on a mountain side that we shall see the cross. It was only after
Zacchaeus had _climbed_ the tree he could see Jesus. I have been
thinking much of this lately. It is not in the smooth places we shall
see Jesus, it is in the rough, in the storm, or by the sick couch." "A
Christian is one whose object is Christ." "I am rejoiced that you are
enjoying Faber's hymns; they always _warm_ me up. Oh, my dear, is it
not sad that we prefer to live in the shade when we might have the
glorious sunshine?"
It was during the winter of 1876-77 that Sister Dora felt the first
approach of the terrible disease that was to cause her death, and then
it was rather by diminution of strength than by actual pain. She
consulted a doctor in Birmingham, in whom she placed confidence, and
he told her the plain truth, that her days in this world were
numbered. She exacted from him a pledge of secrecy, and then went on
with her work as hitherto.
"She was suddenly brought, as it were, face to face with
death--distant, perhaps, but inevitable; she, who was full of such
exuberant life and spirit that the very word 'death' seemed a
contradiction when applied to her. Even her doctor, as he looked at
her blooming appearance, and measured with his eye her finely made
form, was almost inclined to believe the evidence of his outward
senses against his sober judgment.... She could not endure pity. She,
to whom everybody had learnt instinctively to turn for help and
consolation, on whom others leant for support, must she now come down
to ask of them sympathy and comfort? The pride of life was still
surging up in her, that pride which had made her glory in her physical
strength for its own sake, as well as for its manifold uses in the
service of her Master. True, she had been long living two lives
inseparably blended: the outward life of hard, unceasing toil; the
inner, a constant communion with the unseen world, the existence of
which she realised to an extent which not even those who saw the most
of her could appreciate. To all the poor, ignorant beings whose souls
she tried to reach by means of their maimed bodies, she was, indeed,
the personification of all that they could conceive as lovable, holy
and merciful in the Saviour. At the same time she judged her own self
with strict impartiality. She knew her own faults, her unbending
will--her pride and glory in her work seemed to her even a fault; and,
in place of looking on herself as perfect she was bowed down with a
sense of her own short-comings. At the same time--with death before
her, she hungered for more work for her Master. His words were
continually on her lips: 'I must work the works of Him that sent me
while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.'"
At last, in the month of August, 1878, typhoid fever having broken out
in the temporary hospital, it was found necessary to close it, and
hasten on the work of the construction of another. This gave her an
opportunity for a holiday and a complete change. She went to the Isle
of Man, to London, and to Paris.
But the disorder was making rapid strides, and was causing her intense
suffering, and she craved to be back at Walsall. She got as far as
Birmingham, and was then in such a critical state that it was feared
she would die. But her earnest entreaty was to be taken to Walsall.
"Let me die," she pleaded, "among my own people."
Mr. Welsh says: "On calling at the Queen's Hotel, Birmingham (where
she was lying ill), I was told the doctor of the hospital (Dr.
Maclachlan) was with her, and thinking they were probably arranging
matters connected with the hospital, I did not go to her room, but
proceeded to the train. I had scarcely got seated when the doctor
called me out, and we entered a compartment where we were alone. He
asked me when it was intended to open the hospital. I replied, 'On the
4th of November.' 'Then,' he said, 'that will just be about the same
time Sister Dora will die.'
"The announcement was to me a shock of no ordinary kind, for I had not
heard of her being ill, and no one could have imagined, from the
cheerful tone of a letter I had received from her a week or so
before, that there was anything the matter with her. Not being able to
fully realise the true state of affairs, I asked him if he were
jesting. He replied he was not, and that he thought it best to let me
know at once, so that arrangements might be made for getting someone
to take her place when the hospital was opened. I said, 'I suppose she
is going to Yorkshire?' 'No,' he replied, 'and that is another thing I
wish to speak to you about. She wishes to die in Walsall, and she must
be removed immediately.'
"On Sunday (the day following) I saw the chairman and vice-chairman of
the hospital. On Sunday evening I returned with Dr. Maclachlan to the
Queen's Hotel, where he found his patient very weak. On Monday morning
a house was taken, and the furniture she had in her rooms at the
hospital removed to it. Her old servant who had gone to The Potteries,
was telegraphed for, and arrived in a few hours, and by midday the
house was ready for her reception. My daughter, knowing Sister Dora's
fondness for flowers, had procured and placed on the table in the
parlour a very choice bouquet; and when all was ready Dr. Maclachlan
drove over to Birmingham, and brought her to Walsall in his private
carriage.
"The disease was now making steady progress, and it was evident that
every day she was becoming weaker; but she never lost her
cheerfulness, and anyone to have seen her might have thought she was
only suffering from some slight ailment, instead of an incurable and
painful disease."
"A few hours before her death," writes Mr. S. Welsh "she called me to
her bedside and said, 'I want you to promise that you will not, when I
am gone, write anything about me; _quietly I came among you and,
quietly I wish to go away_.'" And this desire of hers would have been
faithfully complied with had not misrepresentations fired the
gentleman to whom the request was made to take up his pen, not in
defence of her, but in the correction of statements that affected
certain persons who were alive.
In her last sickness when she found her end approaching, she insisted
on every one leaving the room--it was her wish to die alone. And as
she persisted, so was it, only one nurse standing by the door held
ajar, and watching till she knew by the change of attitude, and a
certain fixed look in the countenance, that Sister Dora had entered
into her rest.[B]
"It was Christmas Eve when she passed away, and a dense fog, like a
funeral pall, hung over the town and obscured every object a few feet
from the ground. Under this strange canopy the market was being held,
and people were busy buying and selling, and making preparations for
the great Christmas festival on the following day; but when the deep
boom of the passing bell announced the melancholy intelligence that
Sister Dora had entered into her rest, a thrill of horror ran through
the people, who, with blanched cheeks and bated breath, whispered,
'Can it be true?' Although for seven weeks the process of dissolution
had been going on before their eyes, they could not realise the fact
that she whom they loved and revered was no more."
The funeral took place on Saturday, the 28th of December. "The day
was dark and dismal, the streets, covered with slush and sludge caused
by the melted snow, were thronged with spectators.... There was
general mourning in the town; and although it was market day nearly
every shop was closed during the time of the funeral, and all the
blinds along the route of the procession were drawn.... On reaching
the cemetery it was found that four other funerals had arrived from
the workhouse; and as these coffins had been taken into the chapel
there was no room for Sister Dora's, which had, consequently, to be
placed in the porch. This was as Sister Dora would have wished, had
she had the ordering of the arrangements, for she always gave
preference to the poor, to whom she was attached in life, and from
whom she would not have desired to be separated in death."
True to her thought of others, in the midst of her last sufferings,
she had made arrangements for a Christmas dinner to be given to a
number of her old patients, in accordance with a custom of hers in
previous years; but on this occasion the festive proceedings were
shorn of their gladness. All thought of her who in her pain and on her
deathbed had thought of them. Every one tried, but ineffectually, to
cheer and comfort the other, but the task was hopeless. One young
lady, after the meal, and while the Christmas tree was being lighted
commenced singing the pretty little piece, "Far Away," but when she
came to the words:
Some are gone from us forever
Longer here they could not stay,
she burst into tears; and the women present sobbed, and tears were
seen stealing down the cheeks of bearded men.
The Walsall writer of "A Review" concludes his paper thus:
She is no idol to us, but we worship her memory as the most
saintly thing that was ever given us. Her name is immortalised,
both by her own surpassing goodness, and by the love of a whole
people for her--a love that will survive through generations,
and give a magic and a music to those simple words, "Sister
Dora," long after we shall have passed away. There was little we
could ever do--there was nothing she would let us do--to relieve
the self-imposed rigours of her life; but we love her in all
sincerity, and now in our helplessness we find a serene joy in
the knowledge that to her, as surely as to any human soul, will
be spoken the divine words: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."
In Sister Dora, surely we have the highest type of the Christian life,
the inner and hidden life of the soul, the life that is hid in God,
combined with that outer life devoted to the doing of good to
suffering and needy humanity. In the cloistered nun we see only the
first, and that tends to become self-centred and morbid; it is
redeemed from this vice by an active life of self-sacrifice.
I cannot do better than, in conclusion, quote from the last letter
ever penned by Sister Dora:
"It is 2.30 A.M., and I cannot sleep, so I am going to write to you. I
was anything but 'forbearing,' dear; I was overbearing, and I am truly
sorry for it now. I look back on my life and see 'nothing but leaves.'
Oh, my darling, let me speak to you from my deathbed, and say, watch
in all you do that you have a single aim--_God's_ honour and glory. 'I
came not to work my own work, but the works of Him that sent me.' Look
upon working as a privilege. Do not look upon nursing in the way they
do so much nowadays, as an art or science, but as work done for
Christ. As you touch each patient, think it is Christ Himself, and
then virtue will come out of the touch to yourself. I have felt that
myself, when I have had a particularly loathsome patient. Be full of
the Glad Tidings, and you will tell others. You cannot give what you
have not got."