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ment of a committee; the administration of the law in the parishes cited had not been "perfectly satisfactory" (a mild expression for a state of things which, as we have seen, had been pronounced by one of the first medical authorities of the day to be "horrible"); "no doubt cases of hardship and maladministration might arise; but these hardly afforded grounds for the appointment of a committee."

Of course the head of a great public department was bound to deny that it had failed to do the work assigned to it, and so the matter dropped for the time; but let all who read this natural progress of events take to heart the lesson of perseverance that it teaches. We are told that it takes ten years to imbue "that other public" with new ideas in any work of social reform; and so indeed it proved in this case; but in less than four years after this apparent failure, which at the time caused bitter disappointment to all those who were eager for

inquiry, the very committee then asked for was appointed, when Mr. Villiers was President; and in exactly ten years, viz. in 1867, the result appeared in the Bill introduced by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, and subsequently carried.

At Lord Raynham's request, the ladies who were interested in the subject obtained signatures to a petition which was to support his motion. Many of these were willingly given by a large number of influential persons, especially by members of the medical profession.

In the following year Lord Raynham again brought forward his motion in the House of Commons, when Mr. Sotheron Estcourt was President of the Poor Law Board,* but with little better success. His reply was, "that in the absence of any specific allegation of misconduct, the granting of an inquiry would involve an unfair imputation on those who are engaged in the administration of the Poor Law, * See Appendix IV.

and, moreover, the only remedial measures suggested were not such as to require legislative interference."

The mass of correspondence relating to the Marylebone and St. Pancras Workhouses, in 1856, published by order of the House of Commons, had evidently satisfied the Poor Law Board and the public that they had done their duty in the way of investigating grievances and complaints; though it was quite evident that these were but specimens of what was probably existing everywhere, in different degrees of evil. But public opinion had not yet advanced sufficiently to allow of still further investigations, and the time for them had not come.

The comments in the papers all inclined to the opinion that the improvements desired and aimed at were not such as Parliament could enforce, and urged that organized bodies of visitors, carried on in concert with the officials (a plan which had acted admirably where it

had been tried), would be more likely to bring about the desired result.

In this year an article appeared in the Church of England Monthly Review, on "Workhouses and Women's Work," which was afterwards published as a pamphlet, and extensively reviewed and commented upon by the daily press.*

*

Meantime other movements were at work which all helped to draw attention to the subject. In 1855 the matter of training nurses was brought forward by the Epidemiological Society, and a proposal, or suggestion, was made by a committee of several eminent physicians, of whom Dr. E. Sieveking was foremost, that the numerous able-bodied women in workhouses should be trained in the infirmaries and sent out as nurses. In 1858 this was brought before the Poor Law Board, and a circular was issued by them, sanctioning the plan and giving instructions to Boards of Guardians to carry it out.

* See Appendix VI.

с

It is instructive to look back at this suggestion with the light of twenty or more years of experience thrown upon it. It was no doubt the earliest public acknowledgment of the grievous and growing want of efficient nurses for all classes; but what would be said now to the method proposed for obtaining them? It may be that the greatly increased demand for the labour of women, which is now shown in the difficulty of obtaining servants, has so diminished the number of able-bodied women in workhouses, that, far from having any to send out for work, there is now a considerable difficulty in finding persons sufficient to do the work indoors. But we think that little could have been known of the real character of this class of women by those who made the suggestion, or of the fact that the greater number of them were brought to the workhouse by some loss of character, the chief cause of which was certainly intemperance. Anyhow, the plan was never carried out, as we

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