Part 37

An excellent hospital in Burlington, Vt., was planned and endowed by a woman (Miss Mary Fletcher), who gave it her personal supervision. It had no direct bearing on women’s education, but was open to all classes of patients. Since Miss Fletcher’s death it is called by her name. It is mainly intended for residents of the State, although other patients are received if it is not full. It has no women physicians, but a board of women visitors. It has an amphitheater for clinical instruction, and its buildings are large and convenient.

All these hospitals maintain the principle that those who are treated in them should pay for the care they receive according to their ability. The price of board and treatment varies from five to forty dollars per week, according to the service required and other circumstances; but in all the institutions are free beds, endowed or supported by charity.

Out of this hospital work has grown another very important branch of service in the training schools for nurses. While estimating this new departure at its full value, I wish to pause a moment to pay a deserved tribute to the “old-fashioned nurse.” In New England, especially in our country towns, and I presume no less in other parts of the country, the nurse was an important and honored member of society. Although not regularly trained according to the modern demands, she was generally a woman deeply read in the great school of life; often a widowed mother, who earned her bread by giving to others the fruits of her own blighted family life; sometimes a maiden, who, losing the hope of a home of her own, found a wide and useful sphere for her energies and affections in care of the sick; sometimes the girl who had wrecked her life by youthful indiscretion (like Mrs. Gaskell’s “Ruth”), in the ministry of help to others found a life which soothed her own sorrows and restored her to the respect of society. The nurse then gathered her knowledge as she could, watching through long winter nights with sick friends, and visiting among the poor when disease came upon them. Dickens has drawn cruel portraits of the nurse of olden time, true, perhaps, to flagrant instances, but forming a pitiful caricature of the whole class. The old nurse was more often the true friend of the family, summoned in every time of trouble, and loving the children whose birth she had watched, almost as if they were her own.

But with the advance of scientific medical practice it became necessary that the physician should have an assistant fitted to carry out his views skillfully as well as faithfully; and the trained nurse was called into being. She, as well as the physician, must have clinical education. How strongly this need was felt is shown by the almost simultaneous establishment of training schools in various countries. To Miss Nightingale is due the impulse which started the general movement.

The New England Hospital claims priority in this country, in announcing the training of nurses as an important part of its work in 1863; but its school was not fully established until the return of Dr. Dimock from Europe in 1869, who placed it on its present foundation. The methods pursued in the various training schools now in operation are very similar, showing that the work has been carefully considered and is being satisfactorily done. Similar difficulties presented themselves to those found in all industrial education, of which one of the greatest was the impossibility of finding teachers trained for the work. Such women as I have described might be very valuable nurses, but they had not acquired their knowledge systematically, and were not skilled in the art of teaching. The doctor knows what qualities are wanted in a nurse, but cannot always give the instruction and discipline which will secure their development. The women physicians had some advantage in this respect. The very general employment of women as teachers has helped to supply this need. A young woman who had a natural aptitude for nursing, and the high moral qualities necessary for a superintendent of nurses, and who also had the experience of a few years of teaching, became well adapted to the new profession, and after a few years the training schools began to furnish graduates who could carry on the work as teachers.

Another difficulty was in the amount of time required for thorough training. The pupils seldom had resources to support them during one or two years of training. It is quite necessary, therefore, to pay the pupils a small salary, after their first month of probation, in addition to their board and lodging. This is sufficient to provide for their inexpensive clothing and all other necessary expenses, so that the graduate leaves the school without arrears of debt and able to look cheerfully forward to the exercise of her profession. A great step has been gained for women in thus raising this humble labor to the dignity of a profession. The woman who has given one or two years to preparation for her life-work, looks upon it very differently from one who has taken it up only on the pressure of necessity and has to learn her business in the doing of it. She feels a conscious strength in her position, which ought to stimulate her intellectual powers and elevate her moral character. It is true that the school gives her only the preparation for her work, and she must get the best part of her education from life, but she goes to her task with tools well sharpened for use, and a trained power of observation which should make every experience doubly valuable. Let her not lose in the pride of her acquisition the lovelier spirit and conscientious fidelity which made the old nurse the useful and trusted friend of the family.

The well-trained nurse is like another eye and hand to the physician. She notes with reliable accuracy the changes of pulse and temperature, keeps the record of nourishment and sleep, watches every vital function with a practiced eye, and thus can give to the medical attendant a photographic picture of all that has occurred since his last visit. She carries out his directions intelligently, and thus enables him to calculate on strict application of the means he wishes to use.

In 1886, by the report of the Bureau of Education, there were 29 training schools for nurses, 139 instructors, 837 pupils, 349 graduates, in twelve different States and the District of Columbia. Some of these schools are connected with public hospitals, others with private charities. In a few cases the schools are independent of any institution, but the pupils are employed both in hospitals and private families.

The rules of admission are very similar in all schools. The minimum age ranges from twenty to twenty-five, the maximum from thirty-five to forty. As a general rule, twenty-five is a good age at which to enter a training school; the constitution should be well established, the character formed, and some experience of life gained before entering upon this difficult work. Good education and character are required, and in most cases certificates of good health and ability for the work.

The wages paid to pupils vary from seven dollars per month the first year, and twelve dollars the second year, to sixteen dollars per month for the highest grade of nurse, in a New York hospital. The time required for study ranges from one to two years, the last being the rule in a majority of cases. The Philadelphia school, which demands only one year, has an additional course of one year to train superintendents.

The expense of supplying the nursing of the hospital by a training school, in the only case known to me, is found to be about the same as by the old method of hired nurses. Trained nurses receive good pay in comparison with that of the ordinary employments of women, ranging from ten dollars per week upward to twenty, thirty, or even forty dollars, according to the difficulty of the case. While these prices are by no means higher than should reward a nurse who has given years to preparation for her profession and who works faithfully in it, they are yet burdensome to many families. A surgeon will sometimes refuse to take a case unless he can have the skilled nursing that he believes essential to success, and yet the pay of the nurse will take all the earnings of the father, on which the family rely for support.

But, on the other hand, the saving of expense in the number of physician’s visits is to be considered, since he can trust the report of the nurse, and so the patient is better cared for, without additional expense. During the last months of study, the nurse’s work is among the poor, under the direction of the dispensary physicians. Not only are the patients much helped by this arrangement, but the experience is of great value to the nurses, as they see a greater variety of work than they can in a hospital and under differing conditions of life, and are thus fitted to meet what comes to them in their future practice.

Societies are also formed by women for supplying nurses to the sick poor. Such associations employ a number of trained nurses in attendance on patients who are unable to pay full price. They work both in connection with dispensaries and independently of them. Usually a nurse makes two visits a day to her patient, doing for her whatever members of the household cannot do, but she is always required to instruct some of the family, if possible, in the simple methods of care of the sick. She also uses her opportunity to enforce common rules of hygiene and sanitary care on all the household. In this way it is hoped that much may be done for the prevention of disease as well at its cure.

The “Visiting Nurse Society, of Philadelphia,” may serve for a good model of such associations.[200]

While it has been impossible in limited space to do full justice to all the good work now doing in the training of nurses, there are yet two directions, of which I wish to speak, in which it should be extended. It is desirable that women should be especially trained for the care of insane patients, who need peculiar care both in institutions and in private life. The extreme watchfulness and the power of control required for this service seem to demand a special training, which would be unnecessary or even prejudicial in ordinary nursing. This subject is already engaging the attention of those having the care of the insane, and I doubt not they will find means to carry out their ideas.

Again, I believe that nursing would afford a wide field of usefulness for the colored women of our Southern States. Their qualities of patience, sweetness, and affection are well adapted to this profession, and when to these is added the intellectual education which is now within the reach of many of them, there is no reason why, with good training, they should not do excellent service. Many of the best nurses in our Southern cities are of this class. The University of Atlanta, Ga., has made some attempt to introduce nursing into its practical education, and I hope other experiments will soon be made. So far as I know the New England Hospital is the only one that admits colored pupils to its training school. Here this measure has been entirely successful, and no disagreeable feeling has arisen on the part of patients or any one else. The colored students have maintained a fair average in their standing, and some have been superior. A good education is the most important prerequisite to the entrance of colored women into this field.

While my fruitful theme is by no means exhausted, I wish in conclusion to add one thought, viz., that however decidedly these hospitals of which I have spoken owe their existence to women, either as originating or endowing them, in every case within my knowledge there is a union of both sexes in the management of the institution. The arrangements are very various; in some cases the managers are all women and the physicians are men; in others all the physicians but the consulting staff are women, while the board of management is divided between the sexes; in others we find the women have full charge, with an advisory board of men. This proves that women have been more anxious to secure good management than to establish their own claims. It is an earnest of future improvement when both sexes shall work together in all departments of life, each bringing her or his peculiar talents to the work, either as individuals or as representing a part of the community.

XIV. CARE OF THE CRIMINAL.

BY

SUSAN HAMMOND BARNEY.

When Elizabeth Fry, in 1815, rapped at the prison doors in England, she not only summoned the turnkey, but sounded a call to women in other lands to enter upon a most Christlike mission. The reports of her work in Great Britain and on the Continent, published at intervals during several succeeding years, extracts of which found their way into American papers, not only awakened admiration for the fearless courage manifested in the self-denying efforts, but marvel at what she was able to accomplish, and, from the reading, a few women in our land arose to ask the question, “Lord, what will _Thou_ have me to do?” and in the answer found new light upon the words, “I was in prison and ye visited me.”

There was no talk about “going to work,” but, from their knees, two or three women in New York, as early as 1830, began in the quietest manner possible to visit the district lock-ups and prisons, making careful inquiries concerning these places and their inmates, thus gathering up food for thought, which sent them back to their prayers with something definite to ask for.

In 1834 these women, with a few others, organized “The New York Moral Reform Society,” with Margaret Prior for their first missionary, and they made systematic prison visitation a part of their regular work. From their own records, “Our Golden Jubilee, 1834–1884,” we quote: “Our prisons were at that time in a sadly demoralized condition,—as our missionaries went through these public institutions, gathering facts relative to the spiritual condition of the inmates, they saw an urgent necessity of reform and gave themselves no rest till it was accomplished.” To their memorials, petitions, and personal appeals, the State Legislature at length responded, and several reforms were inaugurated, among them better arrangements for separation of the sexes and the placing of matrons over the female departments. At this time Mrs. Dora Foster was given charge of women at the Tombs, then used as a police district lock-up, and she proved of such exceptionable character and qualifications as to continue in favor and in office more than forty years. A great change in the moral atmosphere of the place was effected by her discreet management, and many and sore evils were prevented.

SPREAD OF WORK.

Reports of the work were taken to other cities, and in 1839 the society became national in name, with vice-presidents in seventeen different States, and in the next few years, particularly in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, we find the women prominent in anti-slavery and other reforms, giving special thought and personal efforts, toward the amelioration of the condition of persons confined in our various institutions. Thus quietly was the leaven working in many places, hindered, hampered, and limited by prejudice against woman’s work, and the fear of their seeing too much, if once admitted and allowed the privilege of inspection.

It is recorded, that on one of the ladies being denied the opportunity which she sought of seeing and ministering to a sick _female_ prisoner, while a minister was allowed to go in and on his asking the reason of it, “Why,” said the official, “it wouldn’t have done, she’s too sharp; _she_ wouldn’t have come in here and just prayed and gone away about her business as you have; _she’d wanted to know the cause_”; and another time when those in authority had been solicited by a public-spirited gentleman to grant permission for women to go in and out these places on their errands of mercy, they explained their refusal by saying, “That until the State was ready to expend money enough for several changes, it would only be inviting trouble to have such women spying round and seeing everything, as they were sure to do.”

NEW YORK PRISON ASSOCIATION.

On November 23, 1844, a company of gentlemen gathered in a private parlor in New York City “to take into consideration the destitute condition of discharged convicts”; then a circular was issued, calling for a public meeting on December 6, at which time the following resolution, among others, was offered by Isaac T. Hopper: “_Resolved_, That in the foundation of such a society (the New York Prison Association), it would be proper to have a female department to be especially regardful of the interests and welfare of prisoners of that sex.”

Public meetings were held, and in June, 1845, a house was taken, two matrons placed in charge, and a committee of ladies organized to superintend and control its operations. A sewing department and school were established, and at a later day a laundry.

In 1854 the women dissolved all connection with the New York Prison Association, and were incorporated as “The Women’s Prison Association and Home.” Up to this time the Home had averaged about 150 inmates per year. We quote from one of their reports: “We will not dwell upon the many years of up-hill work through every possible discouragement, but proceed at once to the results of a pre-determined endeavor to take by the hand the unfortunate of our sex and lead them to a better life, where by patient industry they might earn an honest livelihood.”

In 1859 the association adopted as a distinctive name for its house department that of “The Isaac T. Hopper Home.” The work has gone steadily on, the women of the association having been to the front in every effort for prevention of crime, and reform of the criminal girls and women, and in their forty-fourth annual report, we find, “During the year 119 women have been sent to service in families in the State, and 31 out of the State; 4 were returned to friends.” Only those who can read between the lines can understand all that these items mean. To those who talk glibly about “abandoned women” and the “utter hopelessness of trying to save them,” the subjoined lines from the same report might seem “mere sentiment,” but to those with clearer vision it is the secret of their success. “We believe that woman, in her deepest degradation, holds something sacred, something undefiled; and, like the diamond in the dark, retains some quenchless gleams of the celestial light.”

The prison committee, through its chairman, gave in 1887 an exhaustive report upon the condition of prisons and station houses, and in 1888, through their prison visitor, a female M.D., a careful report, both of which contain items which are strange reading for nineteenth century civilization and progress.

PERSONAL WORK.

In the autumn of 1844, Margaret Fuller Ossoli accepted a position on the New York _Tribune_, and became an inmate of the Greeley mansion. The prison on Blackwell’s Island was on the opposite side of the river, at a distance easily reached by boat, and Sing Sing was not far off. Margaret was to “write up” these places, and gladly took the first opportunity to visit them. Her biographer says: “She had consorted hitherto with the _élite_ of her sex, she now made acquaintance with the outcasts to whom the elements of womanhood are scarcely recognizable. For both she had one gospel, that of high hope and divine love. She seemed to have found herself as much at home in the office of encouraging the fallen as she had been, when it was her duty to arouse the best spirit in women sheltered from the knowledge and experience of evil by every favoring circumstance.” She herself said of a meeting where she addressed the female prisoners, “All passed, indeed, as in one of my Boston classes.” This was after Mrs. Farnum had been appointed matron, a woman of uncommon character and ability, and the women already showed the results of her intelligent and kindly treatment. Through the letters published in the _Tribune_, on “Prison Discipline,” “Appeal for an Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners,” “Capital Punishment,” and others, public attention and interest were awakened, and Mr. Greeley says, “I doubt that our various reformatory institutions had ever before received such wise and discriminating commendation to the favor of the rich as they did from Margaret’s pen during her connection with us.”

Dorothea Dix, of blessed memory, whose specialty seemed the caring for the insane, gave much thought and gracious ministry to those in bonds; and many were indebted to her personal efforts in their behalf, both while in prison and in the trying time of their release. She was also fearless in lifting up her voice against abuses, and in favor of needed reforms. She was so persistent in reiterating her protests, that attention had to be given, and her demands secured changes which are thankfully remembered.

In Rhode Island, as early as 1830, a young and gifted woman, whose heart had been stirred by accounts given by her father, a prominent lawyer, began to visit the institutions of the State; and through a long and eventful life has continued her ministrations. Even now, in her ninety-first year, she has not entirely laid down her work. By voice and pen she has appealed stoutly against wrongs and abuses, and while she has been the spiritual mother of numberless men and women, she has not neglected the financial aid so important to those who emerge from prison life. She was the originator of the “Rhode Island Prisoners’ Aid Association,” and the founder of the “Temporary Industrial Home” for released female prisoners, which was opened in 1880, and bears her name, “The Sophia Little Home.”

Among the special workers should be named Miss Linda Gilbert of New York, who has devoted much time to prison work, and in fifteen years has procured employment for over six thousand ex-convicts; six hundred of the better class of these she has by her own individual aid established in business in a small way, and in speaking of the results of her ventures in thus assisting them, she says, “I am happy to state that not ten per cent. of the number thus aided have turned out unsatisfactorily.” She has also presented twenty-two libraries to prisons in six different States, and among other projects which she hopes to accomplish is the establishing of a national industrial home for ex-convicts, where various branches of labor can be taught and the inmates put in the way of becoming self-supporting. When a little girl of only eight or nine years, she used to visit the prison nearest her home and take some little gift, if only a few flowers, to cheer the prisoners, who learned to look upon her visits to their dark abode as they would a stray sunbeam from heaven.

Elizabeth Comstock, of Michigan, upon whose head in childhood Elizabeth Fry placed her hand as she said the kindly words, “Remember what I tell thee, dear Elizabeth; to be Christ’s messenger to those who know him not, that is the happiest life,” has so well carried out her avowed purpose, “To bear our Father’s message of love and mercy to the largest household on earth, the household of affliction,” that in thirty years, mid duties urgent and varied, she has visited over 120,000 prisoners, awakening hope and giving direction to many lives.

A long list of other names might be added, but our space is otherwise needed.

REFORMATORY PRISONS FOR WOMEN.