White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor Part 9

"So far as I can recollect, it was always sun-s.h.i.+ny when we visited old Rosie, though of course it must have rained sometimes. She had a single room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch.

There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too; there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven long years. She is a hundred and five years old, and her hair is snowy white, yet there is not a wrinkle on her brow, and her cheeks have the rosy brightness from which she gets the familiar name. All her relations are gone, and she is now a pauper with only two or three s.h.i.+llings a week from the parish.

"We might call her poor and lonely and bedridden, yet she is brimful of happiness. The Bible is constantly at her hand, and she is generally thanking G.o.d for all His mercies. She has lived in the light and love of the Saviour since she was eleven years old; and she has gone so long and so far in the good way, that now it is as if she were sitting just outside the golden gates, crowned with radiant beauty and clothed with white raiment, waiting until her Lord shall bid her enter.

"At dear old Rosie's bed we used to have a little service; first a chapter read from the Bible, then a hymn--'Rock of Ages' was her favorite, sung to 'Rousseau's Dream.' When the prayer was over, old Rosie would lay her thin hand on the little lad's curly head, and say as she turned her face upward, 'O Lord, bless the little lad! Bless him and make him a preacher.' I didn't like that prayer of hers, and I used to say to myself, 'I will never be a preacher; I will be a doctor, and gallop about the country visiting people.' But one Sunday, after the service and her little prayer, she said 'good-by' to us all. 'You won't see me any more; so it must be good-by for a long time now, until we meet at home.' We wondered what she meant. Two days after, she was carried home by G.o.d's angels from her lonely room. My little heart was like to break at the thought of never seeing her again; and I went out by myself to the garden and prayed, 'Please G.o.d, I don't care so much, after all, if I become a preacher, if it will make dear Rosie any happier.'"

It would be better for us that a millstone were hanged about our necks, and we were cast into the depths of the sea, than that we should be thoughtless or indifferent of one of G.o.d's poor, like old Rosie.

Well, you ask, how can it be made better? My answer is that there ought to be a radical change in the Board of Control of Public Inst.i.tutions.

I do not make any personal fight on the three men now in control. I make war on the whole system. As it is now, there are, in and about Boston, ten public inst.i.tutions, occupied by thousands of men and women and children, carried on at an expense of nearly six hundred thousand dollars, entirely under the control of three commissioners. This is not wise. There ought to be a large advisory board made up of distinguished citizens. This should be composed of women as well as men. It is certainly a very short-sighted and thoughtless arrangement that, although there are in these inst.i.tutions several hundred women and children, there is no woman who has any authorized interest in them.

There is every reason why women should be on the Boards of Control of Public Inst.i.tutions. The editor of the New York _Nation_ says: "Whatever improvement there has been in the condition of Bellevue Hospital, for example, and of the hospitals of Blackwell's and Hart's Islands, during the past twenty years--and it is very great--has, as a rule, been due to women's initiative and labors."

The fact is, that everything that concerns health, education, and good morals occupies the minds of women more than it does the minds of most of their husbands and fathers; and in every department of munic.i.p.al administration, where the conditions of the streets, of the sewers, of the hospitals and almshouses, and of the police, are in question, women have an equal interest with men, and in order to the public well-being and safety, ought to have an equal voice. I am sure that an advisory board of leading citizens, on which were three or four level-headed, humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment of Boston's paupers. Do not put this question aside. This is Boston's question, and you are a part of Boston. As some one sang in the Boston _Transcript_ not long ago:--

"Lazarus lies at your gate!

O proud and prosperous city, How long will you let him wait?

Listen and look; have pity.

Dives, oh, cannot you hear, For the music and dance of your high land, The moaning of misery drear That comes from the desolate island?

Finest of linen you wear; Comrades in luxury you cherish, Sumptuous daily you fare.

What of your neighbors who perish?

When you would heighten your cheer By a contrast that's very dramatic, Fancy what scenes may appear In a certain dim hospital attic.

Swarming and sweltering, and scant Of air,--foul to soul as to senses,-- Where he that is guilty of Want Meets a doom fit for graver offences.

Worn-out, the pauper nurse sleeps; The sufferer, forsaken, is crying With no one to moisten his lips,-- No one to mark that he's dying.

Who should hear the _catch_ in his breath 'Mid the coughs, curses, ravings, resounding Through the ward o'er the bed of his death, From the close-crowded pallets surrounding?

And picture the scenes, to come Perhaps, of another sorrow Nearer your stately home,-- That you will not have to borrow;

When hushed is all merry din, And your smiling guests have vanished; When your flowers come blooming in, To be glanced at once and banished;

When vain are all the crafts That Mammon serve, and never Tour costliest, coolest draughts Can quench the fire of your fever;

When your street is red with tan, And your oft-pulled door-bell m.u.f.fled, That the peace of a dying man By no faintest sound be ruffled;

When love, to give you rest, Doth toil with soothings fruitless; And skill has done its best, And the town's best skill is bootless;

When the chaises leave the place, And the helpless, poor patrician Lies looking up in the face Of only the Great Physician,--

G.o.d grant it with joy may be That you hear, 'What you did toward others Ye have done it unto Me, In the least of those My brothers!'

Lazarus lies at your gate; Our kindly dear old city, Let him no longer wait; Open the doors of your pity!"

XI.

COMMENT ON "OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THE BOSTON PAUPERS".

"There is no caste in blood, Which runneth of one hue, nor caste in tears, Which trickled salt with all."

Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln, who has given a large amount of time and painstaking interest to the treatment of the paupers, and who deserves more credit than any one else for the present hopeful campaign in their behalf, writes as follows in the _Boston Transcript_ of August 28:--

"Those of your readers who were kind enough to follow in your columns, last winter, the articles for which you courteously made s.p.a.ce there concerning the poor of Boston, will, I think, be interested to know what has since been done for the islands, and why so much controversy is aroused by the sermon of Dr. Banks on the paupers.

"Early in the spring two new commissioners were appointed. It was hoped that this change in the board would bring about good results, but, in point of fact, matters remained much the same. The appropriation for a new hospital, though made months ago, was not acted upon until this week, when bids for the building were opened."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WOMEN'S HOSPITAL WARD AT LONG ISLAND.]

[Footnote: This is the best hospital ward on the two islands. Screen shown on the right, behind which is a dying woman.]

"On August 5, I had the honor to lay before the commissioners eight requests on behalf of the inmates of the island, as follows:--

1. More occupation for the able-bodied.

2. More comfortable chairs for the aged women, who are obliged to rise at 5:30 A.M., and are not allowed to lie down without permission.

3. More benches out of doors for the benefit of the inmates.

4. A separate room for the dying (it having been urged by both the physician and superintendent that the cries of dying patients often disturbed a whole ward for several nights).

5. More privacy for women in bathing (and it will, perhaps, shock your readers, as it did the writer, that one of the commissioners affirmed and repeated that he did not consider this necessary).

6. Another nurse at Long Island, where Miss...o...b..ian has charge of fifty-two sick women and where there is no bath-room.

7. Another nurse at the Main Inst.i.tution Building on Rainsford Island, where the laundry-matron has charge of forty-two sick women in addition to her other duties, and with no a.s.sistance except what is given her by inmates.

8. A new matron for the hospital. My reason for making this last request is that I believe the present matron to be inefficient. She has had no previous hospital training to fit her for her duties, and certainly the hospital and its patients, when I last saw them, bore evidences of neglect. The beds were not clean, and the patients showed a lack of personal cleanliness and care. When I first visited the hospital the floors were dirty and the closets were unwashed, but there has been an improvement in those respects. I was present when dinner was served to thirty patients in one ward--or, indeed, to seventy inmates of the hospital--and the matron took no charge of the food, which was put before the patients in a most uninviting manner--a great contrast to the neat wooden trays which are in use at Tewksbury.

Moreover, I discerned a want of interest in the patients, to which the matron herself bore testimony when she said that she never washed a wound, and was engaged as a matron--not as a nurse.

"These, then, were the grounds upon which I asked for the appointment of another nurse or matron, and fortunately one has applied for the position entirely without my knowledge or solicitation. One of the commissioners doubted whether a trained hospital emergency nurse could be found to go to the islands; but this offer seems to set that question at rest, and it is to be hoped her application may be considered favorably.

"I also had the honor to lay before the commissioners the report of one of my former tenants, who was an inmate of Rainsford Island a little more than a year ago.

"She was a young woman who went down there because of a lump in her breast, taking her baby with her. But for the baby she would have been admitted to the City Hospital: but she did not like to leave her child, and her husband, who was absent, was unable to care for it.

Consequently, she became for the time an inmate of the Rainsford Island Hospital.

"She complained first of the indignity of having to strip in the presence of others, no screen or curtain being provided as a shelter to the necessary bath, which is the first step on entrance to an inst.i.tution.

"During her stay of three weeks she had no towel given to her, and only one clean sheet was furnished.

"She was expected to cook all the food for her baby, and to make and clean her own bed, although she was partly incapacitated by the lump in her breast, which affected one arm.