The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 17

Miss Nightingale's resentment was perfectly justified. Her remonstrances to Mr. Herbert were necessary. His well-intentioned action was calculated to undermine her authority, and to aggravate her difficulties; and, in both of these ways, to imperil the success of their joint experiment. Her handling of the crisis which had burst upon her was, perhaps, in relation to the subordinates unfortunate. Miss Stanley was accompanied by Dr. Meyer, a medical man, and Mr. Jocelyne Percy, who had gone out (as Mrs. Herbert wrote to Mrs. Bracebridge) devoted to Miss Nightingale, "saying he would be her footman, etc."[105]

"We picked out," added Mrs. Herbert plaintively, "the two men in England who, we thought, would help Flo most," and they returned sad and sore at their cold reception. Miss Nightingale, acting on advice she received on the spot, asked them to sign notes of their conversation with her;[106]

this rankled with them, and Mr. Percy made a grievance of it in England. Mrs. Herbert, in reporting all this to Mrs. Bracebridge (Jan.

7, 1855), made the final reflection: "Perhaps it is wholesome for us to be reminded that Flo is _still a mortal_, which we were beginning to doubt." Mortals have to deal with entanglements as best they may on the spur of the moment; and those at a distance hardly made enough allowance for the difficulties with which Miss Nightingale was suddenly confronted, for the danger which Mr. Herbert's dispatch of unsolicited reinforcements involved, and, therefore, for the importance which she attached to having all the conditions defined in black and white.

[105] See below, p. 241.

[106] It was Mr. Bracebridge who took the notes of the interview.

Her practical genius and good sense speedily triumphed, however, over the difficulties of the case. In agreement with the medical authorities, the number of female nurses at Scutari was raised to 50, and Miss Nightingale weeded out some of her original staff in favour of new-comers. Others of them were sent to the hospitals at Balaclava (p.

254); and others to those at Koulali (p. 174). Miss Stanley, whose intention it had been to return to England as soon as she had deposited her party, remained for several months in charge at the latter place, not administering the nursing service altogether according to Miss Nightingale's ideas,[107] but rendering aid to the afflicted of which her brother, the Dean, has left us so charming and sympathetic a memorial.[108]

[107] Miss Nightingale made some criticisms in an official letter to the War Office, May 1, 1855; printed at pp. 389, 390 of the pamphlet No. 52 in Bibliography B. And in another letter (March 5) she begged Lord Panmure to relieve her of responsibility for the hospitals at Koulali.

[108] In an appendix to the _second_ edition (1880) of his _Memorials of Edward and Catherine Stanley_.

In the end, then, the scope of Miss Nightingale's experiment was considerably enlarged; and the deeper significance of the episode is to be found in the emphasis which it throws upon the novelty and difficulties of Miss Nightingale's enterprise. In these days, nurses, trained and distinctively attired, are so much part of everyday life, women-nurses serving under the Red Cross are so normal a feature of war, and Territorial nurses, smartly uniformed, are so familiar a unit of auxiliary forces, that some effort of imagination is required to realize the conditions which existed sixty years ago. We remember that a staff of nearly 800 female nurses was maintained for service in the South African War, and may be tempted to smile at the question between 20 and 40, or 40 and 90 for the Crimea. But it was Miss Nightingale who showed the way, and the way of the pioneer is rough. No one who reads this volume will suspect her of timidity, or think her wanting in self-confidence; yet so conscious was she of the difficulties that in this instance she under-rated her power, and was anxious to keep the experiment within much narrower limits than it a.s.sumed. Her original idea had been to limit the number of female nurses to 20, but at various dates after Miss Stanley's arrival she sent home for more nurses, and, before the war was over, she had had control of 125.

III

Miss Nightingale's reluctance to a.s.sume the superintendence of additional nurses will be the more readily understood when we pa.s.s to the multifarious duties which circ.u.mstances led her to discharge.

"Having understood," she wrote to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (Nov.

7), "that Your Excellency has the power of drawing upon Government for the uses of the sick and wounded, I beg to state that there is at present a great deficiency of linen among the men in the Hospitals until the Government Stores can arrive and be appropriated to them. A hundred pairs of sheets and 200 s.h.i.+rts might be applied to such a temporary purpose, and would never be _de trop_. Also a few American stoves, upon which we might prepare delicate food for the worst cases, who require to be fed every two or three hours, which is of course impossible for the Medical Officers and Orderlies to attend to; many deaths are necessarily the consequence."

This suggestion to the Amba.s.sador, made on the third day after Miss Nightingale's arrival, serves to introduce two main directions in which she applied a woman's insight to the condition of things at Scutari.

Efficient nursing requires, she well knew, cleanliness and delicately cooked food. She set herself with characteristic energy to supply these necessities. She found "not a basin, nor a towel, nor a bit of soap, nor a broom," and instantly requisitioned 300 scrubbing brushes. "The first improvements took place," said Mr. Macdonald, "after Miss Nightingale's arrival--greater cleanliness and greater order. I recollect one of the first things she asked me to supply was 200 hard scrubbers and sacking for was.h.i.+ng the floors, for which no means existed at that time."[109]

Miss Nightingale had foreseen that was.h.i.+ng would be one of the first things necessary. During the voyage out, as the s.h.i.+p was approaching Constantinople, one of the party went up to her and said earnestly, "Oh, Miss Nightingale, when we land, don't let there be any red-tape delays, let us get straight to nursing the poor fellows!" "The strongest will be wanted at the wash-tub," was the reply. Until Miss Nightingale arrived, the number of s.h.i.+rts washed during a month was six.[110] Up to the date of her arrival, the Purveyor-General had contracted for the was.h.i.+ng of the hospital bedding, and of the linen of the patients. Simultaneously, however, with the arrival of the wounded from Inkerman, it was found that the contractor had broken down in the latter part of his contract.

And even with regard to the former part, the bedding was washed, Miss Nightingale discovered, in cold water. She insisted upon hot; the more since it was found, as the Duke of Newcastle's commissioners reported, that many of the articles sent back from the wash as clean, had to be destroyed as being in fact verminous. Miss Nightingale accordingly took a Turkish house, had boilers supplied in it by the Engineer's Office, employed soldiers' wives to do the was.h.i.+ng, and thus gave the sick and wounded the comfort of clean linen. All this was paid for partly out of her private funds and partly by the _Times_ fund.

[109] _Roebuck Committee, Q_. 6140.

[110] This fact, reported by the Roebuck Committee, barbed one of Mr. Kinglake's sarcasms against the males (vi. 427 _n._). It also greatly impressed John Bright. See Mr. G. M. Trevelyan's _Life_ of him, 1913, p. 242.

Yet more important, perhaps, to the comfort and recovery of the sick, were Miss Nightingale's "Extra Diet Kitchens." When she came to the Barrack Hospital she found that all the cooking was done in thirteen large coppers, situated at one end of the vast building. The patients'

beds extended over a s.p.a.ce of from three to four miles (including, of course, both wards and corridors); it took three or four hours to serve the ordinary dinners, and there were no facilities whatever for preparing delicacies between times. Within ten days of her arrival, Miss Nightingale had remedied this defect. She opened two "extra diet kitchens" in different parts of the building, and had three supplementary boilers fixed on one of the staircases for the preparation of arrowroot and the like. As explained more fully below (p. 201), nothing was supplied except in accordance with medical directions; and she met the doctors' requisitions out of her private stores only when the government stores failed. "It is obvious," she explained, "that Miss Nightingale would have s.h.i.+elded herself from heavy responsibility by adhering, and by obtaining the adherence of the medical officers, to the strict precedents of Military Hospital Regulations, according to which the materials for the Extra Diets would have been sent in to her by the purveyor without requisition, in the same manner as is practised in the case of the ordinary diets; but she felt that in doing so she would most frequently be defeating the object she was sent to carry out, for in the majority of cases the purveyor had either no supply, or a supply of a very indifferent quality of the articles required."[111] It is safe to say that many lives were saved by the application by Miss Nightingale of the good housewife's care to the kitchen of the hospitals. The woman's eye was not above distinguis.h.i.+ng between bone and gristle and meat in the men's dinner, and she wanted to have the meat issued from the stores boned, so that one patient should not get all bone, another all gristle, and another all meat. But on this point she was beaten. The Inspector-General informed her that it would require a new "Regulation of the Service" to "bone the meat"!! The notes of exclamation are hers.[112] In the culinary department an invaluable volunteer arrived in 1855 in the person of Alexis Soyer, once famous as the _chef_ of the Reform Club, and still alive as M. Mirobolant in Thackeray's _Pendennis_. M. Soyer rearranged and partly superseded Miss Nightingale's kitchens at Scutari. We shall meet with him and his good work again when we accompany her to the Crimea.

[111] _Statement_, p. 26 _n._

[112] Letter to Mr. Herbert, Feb. 5, 1855.

Miss Nightingale was not long at Scutari without being touched by the pitiable condition of the women camp-followers, separated often from their regiments, and in a very forlorn state. Miss Nightingale deputed the care of them in large measure to Mrs. Bracebridge, who, with her husband, collected and administered a separate fund for giving a.s.sistance to the wives, women, and children of soldiers at Scutari. A Lying-in Hospital was organized; and Miss Nightingale found employment for many of the women, both in was.h.i.+ng as aforesaid, and in making up old linen into various hospital requisites. Here, too, helpful volunteers presently arrived. The Rev. Dr. and Lady Alicia Blackwood were moved after the Battle of Inkerman to go out to Scutari and see if they could be of use. Dr. Blackwood asked and obtained an appointment as a military chaplain; and, on their arrival, Lady Alicia went straight to Miss Nightingale and asked what she could do to help:--

"The reply she gave me," wrote Lady Alicia, "or rather the question she put me in reply, after a few seconds of silence, with a peculiar expression of countenance, made an indelible impression.

'Do you mean what you say?' 'Yes, certainly; why do you ask me?'

'Because I have had several such applications before, and when I have suggested work, I found it could not be done, or some excuse was made; it was not exactly the sort of thing intended, it required special suitability, &c.' 'Well,' I replied, 'I am in earnest; we came out here with no other wish than to help where we could.' 'Very well, then, you really can help me if you will. In this Barrack are now located some two hundred poor women in the most abject misery. A great number have been sent down from Varna; they are in rags, and covered with vermin. My heart bleeds for them; but my work is with the soldiers, not with their wives. Now, will you undertake to look after them? If you will take them as your charge, I will send an orderly who will show you their haunts.'"[113]

[113] _Narrative of a Residence on the Bosphorus_, p. 49. Any reader who wishes to be harrowed should read the following pages in Lady Alicia's Journal. She died in July 1913 in her 95th year.

Lady Alicia went, and with her husband was of great a.s.sistance. Miss Nightingale was mindful also of the families of her nurses. Some of them were wives and widows who had left children at home. "Many things turn up," wrote Lady Verney to a friend, "for us to do for Florence; as in looking after the children of her nurses." And Mrs. Nightingale wrote similarly (April 1855):--

Flo has been writing incessantly lately about her nurses' families, for whom the best seem getting very anxious, and she scarcely mentions anything else. We have seen and heard much in visiting them which is a great pleasure to us.

Before the Roebuck Committee, Dr. Andrew Smith, the head of the Army Medical Department in London, was asked, "What do you think was the result of Miss Nightingale's mission?" "I daresay," he answered, apparently with some reluctance, "it was very advantageous"; and then, pulling himself together like a man and seeking to be just, he added: "There is no doubt about it; because females are able to discover many deficiencies that a man would not think of, and they will look at things that a man will have no idea of looking to." A very true statement; and perhaps as much as could reasonably be expected from an official on the defensive. But I think we shall find in the next chapter that some of the things which Miss Nightingale saw and did were not unworthy of the more comprehensive sweep claimed by Dr. Smith for the male faculty of vision.

CHAPTER V

THE ADMINISTRATOR

I have no hesitation in saying that Miss Nightingale has exhibited greater power of organization, a greater familiarity with details, while at the same time taking a comprehensive view of the general bearing of the subject, than has marked the conduct of any one connected with the hospitals during the present war.--_Sidney Herbert_ (speech at Willis's Rooms, Nov. 29, 1855).

Ostensibly, and by the strict letter of her original instructions, Miss Nightingale was only Superintendent of the Female Nursing establishment.

In fact, and by force of circ.u.mstances, she became a Purveyor to the Hospitals, a Clothier to the British Army, and in many emergencies a _Dea ex machina_.

She became, first, Purveyor-Auxiliary to the hospitals at Scutari. My statements under this head might seem to be the inventions of a satirist if I did not disclaim credit for such ingenuity by adding that they are in every case extracted from official sources. Of the ignorance existing in high places of the true state of things at Scutari, the best ill.u.s.tration is the answer which the British Amba.s.sador gave when he was asked by the Commissioner of the _Times_ Fund what things were most needed in the hospitals. "Nothing is needed," said Lord Stratford, and the only suggestion he could make to the _Times_ was that it should devote its fund to building an English Church at Pera. Miss Nightingale thought that the service of G.o.d included the service of man, and Mr.

Macdonald, the _Times_ Commissioner, agreed with her. Between them, they established not a church, but a store. The Amba.s.sador of course formed his conclusions from what he was told; and the Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer at Scutari "stated that he wanted nothing in the shape of stores or medical comforts at a time when his patients were dest.i.tute of the commonest necessaries. a.s.sistance which had been discouraged as superfluous was eventually found essential for the lives of the patients."[114]

"I am a kind of General Dealer," wrote Miss Nightingale to Mr.

Herbert (Jan. 4, 1855), "in socks, s.h.i.+rts, knives and forks, wooden spoons, tin baths, tables and forms, cabbage and carrots, operating tables, towels and soap, small tooth combs, precipitate for destroying lice, scissors, bedpans and stump pillows. I will send you a picture of my Caravanserai, into which beasts come in and out. Indeed the vermin might, if they had but 'unity of purpose,'

carry off the four miles of beds on their backs, and march with them into the War Office, Horse Guards, S.W."

[114] _Roebuck Committee_, Fifth Report, pp. 20, 21.

The caravanserai was the large kitchen aforesaid (p. 173). "From this room," wrote one of the lady volunteers, "were distributed quant.i.ties of arrowroot, sago, rice puddings, jelly, beef-tea, and lemonade upon requisitions made by the surgeons. This caused great comings to and fro; numbers of orderlies were waiting at the door with requisitions. One of the nuns or a lady received them, and saw they were signed and countersigned before serving. We used, among ourselves, to call this kitchen the tower of Babel. In the middle of the day everything and everybody seemed to be there: boxes, parcels, bundles of sheets, s.h.i.+rts, and old linen and flannels, tubs of b.u.t.ter, sugar, bread, kettles, saucepans, heaps of books, and of all kinds of rubbish, besides the diets which were being dispensed; then the people, ladies, nuns, nurses, orderlies, Turks, Greeks, French and Italian servants, officers and others waiting to see Miss Nightingale; all pa.s.sing to and fro, all intent upon their own business, and all speaking their own language."[115]

[115] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. p. 68.

There was also in "The Sisters' Tower," as this part of the Barrack Hospital came to be called, a small sitting-room; and in it "were held those councils over which Miss Nightingale so ably presided, at which were discussed the measures necessary to meet the daily-varying exigencies of the hospital. From hence were given the orders which regulated the female staff. This, too, was the office from which were sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters at home, telling of the sufferings of the sick and wounded."[116] In the Report of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, as also in Miss Nightingale's _Statement to Subscribers_, the full list of articles supplied by her may be found, tabulated with a precision and amplitude of detail characteristic of her. It included the miscellaneous utensils, etc., enumerated above, and also various articles of food required for the "extra diets" mentioned in the preceding chapter. The supplies were furnished partly by the _Times_ Fund, partly out of moneys sent to her by benevolent persons, and partly out of the private purse of herself and her immediate friends. Much of the expenditure was ultimately refunded to her by the Government. The sick and wounded soldiers at Scutari would, I fear, have felt ill requited for the lack of linen, sheets, utensils, and extra diet by hearing that a beautiful new church was being built at Pera.

[116] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, by S. G. O., p. 24.

But, it may be asked, were the things which Miss Nightingale procured and issued really wanted? May they not have been her fads? and was not hers perhaps a work of supererogation, for could not the official Purveyor have supplied them? Such statements were widely made at the time, and one can readily understand the reason. By drawing upon her own stores, Miss Nightingale not only furnished the soldiery with the things they were needing, but "administered to the defaulting administrators a telling, though silent, rebuke; and it would seem that under this discipline the groove-going men winced in agony, for they uttered touching complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief did not choose to give them time (it was always time the males wanted), and that the moment a want declared itself, she made haste to supply it herself."[117] But such complaints were entirely unfounded; for it was shown by the Duke of Newcastle's Commission that she never issued anything from her stores, nor did she allow any one else to do so, except upon the demand of the medical officers, and after inquiry of the Purveyor if he could supply them. I find among Miss Nightingale's papers a few of the original requisitions from medical officers. Here is one of them:--

PALACE HOSPITAL, 18_th January_ 1855. MADAM--I have the honor to forward a requisition for 50 s.h.i.+rts and 50 warm flannels. The Purveyor has none. Knowing the extensive demand, I have limited my request to meet the urgent requirements of the most serious cases in my charge. I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient humble servant, EDWARD MENZIES, Staff Surgeon in Charge.

[117] Kinglake, p. 430. He cites an example of the complaints in a private letter from Sir John Burgoyne to Lord Raglan (March 27, 1855). The complaint of the "groove-going men" has been revived in our own day by Lord Stanmore, who complains of Miss Nightingale (_Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, vol. i. p. 381) that she got things (which the Purveyor had failed to get) instead of informing him where they could be got. She acted on what is a golden rule in cases of emergency. When she wanted a thing done without delay, she did it herself.

The list, said the commissioners drily, "must not be regarded as conclusive proof that the articles mentioned in it were invariably wanting in the [Government] stores." Goods, they explained, "have been refused, although they were, to our personal knowledge, lying in abundance in the store of the Purveyor." Why refused? Because the Purveyor took it upon himself to override the requisition of the medical officers? Not at all. "This was done because they had not been examined by the Board of Survey. On one occasion, in the month of December last [1854], we found that this was the case with respect to Hospital rugs, and it is probable that this has not been the only instance of such an occurrence." Miss Nightingale's letters to Mr. Herbert show that it was a frequent occurrence. For instance, in February 1855, she received a requisition from the medical officers at Balaclava for s.h.i.+rts. She knew that 27,000 s.h.i.+rts had at her instance been sent by Government from home, and they were already landed. But the Purveyor would not let them be used; "he could not unpack them without a Board." Three weeks elapsed before the Board released the s.h.i.+rts. The sick and wounded, lying s.h.i.+vering for want of rugs and s.h.i.+rts, would have expressed themselves forcibly, I fear, if it had been explained that they must s.h.i.+ver still until the Board of Survey's good time had arrived.

Miss Nightingale's impatience at such delays was the origin, doubtless, of a story which had wide currency at the time that on one occasion she ordered a Government consignment to be opened forcibly, while the officials wrung their hands at the thought of what the Board of Survey might presently say. The story was mentioned in the Roebuck Committee; and, though it was not confirmed, I think that Miss Nightingale was quite capable of the dreadful deed. Certainly she often insisted on obtaining first-hand evidence for herself, instead of trusting to the report of others; for in one of her letters to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21, 1854), I find this pa.s.sage: "This morning I foraged in the Purveyor's Store--a cruise I make almost daily, as the only way of getting things.

No mops, no plates, no wooden trays (the engineer is having these made), no slippers, no shoe-brushes, no blacking, no knives and forks, no spoons, no scissors (for cutting the men's hair, which is literally alive), no basins, no towelling, no chloride of zinc." Then she enumerates the things which Mr. Herbert should send from London, adding, "The other articles mentioned above as not now in store can be had at Constantinople" or Ma.r.s.eilles; whence, I imagine, she proceeded to get them. Shopping at Scutari was not an afternoon's easy amus.e.m.e.nt:--

"English people," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 10), "look upon Scutari as a place with inns and hackney-coaches, and houses to let furnished. It required yesterday, to land 25 casks of sugar, four oxen and two men for six hours, plus two pa.s.ses, two requisitions, Mr. Bracebridge's two interferences, and one apology from a quarter-master for seizing the _araba_, received with a smile and a kind word, because he did his duty; for every _araba_ is required on Military store or Commissariat duty. There are no pack-horses and no a.s.ses, except those used by the peasantry to attend the market 1-1/4 miles off. An _araba_ consists of loose poles and planks, extended between two axle-trees, placed on four small wheels, and drawn by a yoke of weak oxen.... Four days in the week we cannot communicate with Constantinople, except by the other harbour, 1-1/4 miles off, to which the road is almost impa.s.sable."