CHAPTERII
InJuly, 1862, one hundred and twenty-five patients from the Army of the Potomac were sent to the Long Island College Hospital. No adequate preparation had been made to provide for these sick men. Through the press a public call was sent out for volunteers. Many ladies and gentlemen at once offered to help care for the sick, and to supply food for their emaciated bodies.
An endorsement of the distinguished physician of Romson Street, Dr. Burge, made me quite happy by affording me the privilege of helping to care for the soldiers in our city.
Among the large number of our best Brooklyn people to volunteer their help and support was our saintly Mrs. Richard Manning, who continued her ministration throughout the long duration of the war, and for many years after gave substantial help to the destitute families of soldiers; and also Mrs. Anna C. Field, chief organizer and president of the Woman’s Club, as well as of the Woman’s Suffragist Association. Both of these clubs celebrated, during the spring of 1909, in the new Brooklyn Academy of Music, the fortieth anniversary of their organization. I believe that, in modern Brooklyn, no other woman has done so much, in her long life of benevolence and charity, as this Mother of Brooklyn Clubs, for the elevation and encouragement of women especially in ethics and literature.
Watches of four hours each during the day were assigned to the women, and at night the same number of hours were allotted to men volunteers.
Anna FieldMRS. ANNA C. FIELD
MRS. ANNA C. FIELD
Owing to the astonishing liberality of the citizens of Brooklyn, the hospital donations seemed like a great cornucopia overflowing the larders of the improvised kitchen. Tender, motherly care, combined with the best of diet, at once restored many a poor, hungry homesick boy. Most of them recovered and returned to their regiments or were sent home.
Allan FooteALLAN FOOTE
ALLAN FOOTE
My first patient was a bright, cheerful young man, Allan Foote, of Michigan, who had been dangerously wounded by a shot that passed through the left lung and out at his back. Such wounds were then supposed to be fatal. He was, however, convalescent, and later was discharged. When he returned to his home in Michigan he again enlisted, raised a company, and went out once more to the front as captain. This time he served till the end of the war, when he returned to his native State safe and well.
A lady, wishing to say something flattering of him to a visitor, remarked: “Why, he was shot right in his back.” Seeing the boy wince at this innocent imputation, I explained that he had received that shot in the breast while facing the enemy in battle.
Among many incidents of his early army life, Allan Foote told me the following:
“I shall never forget his expression when my father gave his written consent to my enlistment in the army in April of ’61, as he handed it to me and said, while tears were running down his cheeks, ‘My son, do your duty, die if it must be, but never prove yourself a coward.’ We can hardly imagine at what cost that was given, and it is now a source of much satisfaction to me to know that God in His mercy so guided me while in the service that no action of mine has ever caused a pain to my father’s heart, and when I returned at the close of the war he seemed as proud of my scars as I was.”
John Sherman was a remarkable case of lost identity. He was eighteen years of age, six feet in height, with broad shoulders and a Washingtonian head, and seemed like some great prone statue as he lay perfectly helpless but for one hand,—a gentle fair-haired boy to whom we became much attached. He was evidently refined, and perfectly clear on religious and political subjects. Though without a wound he had been completely paralyzed by concussion caused by a cannon. He could take only infants’ food and drank milk, which was all the nourishment he could retain. The mystery was that he claimed to come from Cattaraugus County, N. Y., but when I wrote letters to every possible locality, nothing could be learned of such a boy; nor could the officers of his regiment trace him during this time. Some scamp who claimed to come from his town, was admitted through the carelessness of the hospital attendants, and so deceived the poor boy that he gave him ninety dollars army pay just received, to send home to his father. Of course the scamp was never heard of again. My theory is that he enlisted under an assumed name and town, and had, after the concussion, forgotten his real name and identity. He was sent to the Fifty-second Street hospital, where I saw him a year later, walking alone and quite well,—a finely developed physical form. Though he knew me, he held to his old statement. Later he was cruelly persuaded to ask for a discharge which left him homeless, with no refuge but the poor house.
Soldiers’ homes were then unknown; and I fear that, at least for a while, he was cared for as a pauper. About this time I went to the “field work” and lost sight of him, though I have often wondered what his fate has been.
A miserably thin, gaunt boy, whom we knew as “Say,” came under my observation. He was never satisfied, though he ate enormously, and whenever we passed through his ward he invariably shouted: “Say! ye ain’t got no pie nor cake, nor cheese, nor nuthin’, hev ye?” When he reached home, his father, a farmer, sent to the hospital the largest cheese I ever saw. This the men all craved; but it was a luxury denied them by the doctors. Patients often had it smuggled in. One poor fellow was found dead, one morning, with a package of cheese under his pillow.
As the “L. I. C. H.” was a city hospital, emergency and other cases were often brought in. A pathetic case was that of a little boy about six years old, who had been run over by a street car. As he lay, pale and mangled, awaiting the time to have his leg amputated, his mother, in broken English, crooned and mourned over the unconscious child, saying, “Ach, mine liddle poy, he will nefer run mit odder poys in the street and haf not any more good times.” I saw that the child would not live through the operation, and tried to comfort the poor mother while it was going on. When the mutilated, stark little form was returned to her, her grief knew no bounds, though she still believed he would revive.
In another ward poor Isaac was slowly dying of dysentery, gasping for a drink of cool water, which the rules of the profession at that day denied to such patients. Day after day he lay helpless, while a large water cooler dripped constantly day and night before his feverish eyes and parched body.
One day he called to me and said: “Won’t you please sit on my cot so I can rest my knees against your back? They are so tired and I can’t hold them up,”—poor fleshless bones that had no weight. Somewhat relieved while I sat there he went on: “Now, Miss Smith, you think I am dying, don’t you?”
Adelaide SmithADELAIDE W. SMITH, 1863
ADELAIDE W. SMITH, 1863
“Well, Isaac,” I replied hesitatingly, “we fear you are.”
Then with all the strength of his poor skeleton body, he exclaimed, “O then, give me a drink of water that I may die easier. You know I am dying, so it can do no harm.”
Could I refuse a dying man a drink of water, even in the face of orders? He wanted “just a pint.” Watching my chance I went quickly to the cooler and brought a glass of cool water. With unnatural strength he raised himself and, reaching out for the glass, grasped it and swallowed the water with one great gulp. Then returning the empty glass he cried: “There, that was just half! O, give me the other half.” This I did, rather fearfully. After greedily drinking the water he dropped back with a sigh of relief, saying—“Now I can die easy.” I arranged quietly with my patients in the ward so that he could have water as long as he lived; but not many days after I found his empty cot.
The hospital, at that time, was little known, being quite obscured under the limitations of two conservative, retrogressive old doctors, who showed no favor or sympathy for the sick men, and seemed to see them only as probable “subjects.”
Many just protests from the kindly women workers were utterly disregarded by these doctors. Dr. Colton, a handsome young man then an interne, though not of age or yet graduated, found himself often between the “upper and nether millstones” of the urgency of volunteer workers, and the immovable, implacable heads of the hospital. Dr. Colton, now a successful retired physician, occupies a prominent position in this hospital which, in late years, is ranked among the very best of Brooklyn’s institutions.
Meanwhile the people grew tired of the continual demand for supplies, toward which the hospital contributed very little, though it drew regularly from the government “rations” in the form of thirty-seven cents per day for each man. Consequently public contributions became very meagre.
Then in the autumn came ninety-one sick and wounded soldiers, who stood—or dropped—on the grass plots surrounding the hospital while waiting to be enrolled. A procession of grey skeletons, they were ghastly, dirty, famished, with scarcely the semblance of men. One of them stared at me rather sharply and, seeing that I observed it, said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I haven’t seen a white woman before in many months, an’ it seems good to look at you.”
It became difficult to get proper food in the hospital for the men. Some of the volunteers, like myself, could still give their whole time and thought gratuitously, and we continued bringing supplies from our homes for special cases. My mother sent gallons of shell clam juice,—the most healing of all natural tonics when boiled in the shell,—which became popular in the hospital. My mother also invited companies of four or five convalescents at a time to “a good square meal,” when they always chose for their suppers, coffee, buckwheat cakes and sausages. Two gallons of batter would become hot cakes; and it took the combined help of the whole family and the cook to keep them supplied; but the hungry boys were at last satisfied and happy. I had no difficulty in obtaining passes for them, as they felt in honor bound to return promptly to the hospital.
One poor fellow, dying of typhoid, was so irritable and profane to the ignorant, heartless men-nurses of the hospital, that they would not care for him during the night. Realizing that the end was near, and feeling certain that he would otherwise die alone, I decided one night to remain with him until his last breath. Just before he died, even while the pallor of death overspread his face, he struck at the nurse whom I had compelled to stay near to help him. At last the poor dying man gasped: “Lift me up higher! higher! higher!!” We raised the poor skeleton as high as we could reach,—and it was all over. His family refused his body, saying, “He was no good to us in life, why should we bury him?” It is not difficult to imagine that his home influences had been unfavorable to the development of moral character.
Clancy, then a fine looking, kindly policeman, had waited to take me home near morning, as he did on other occasions of this kind.
Some months later, being almost the only young woman still visiting the hospital, I felt obliged to report to that rarely good man, Mr. McMullen,—whose benevolence and generosity had at first brought the patients to the hospital and to the care of the people,—the neglect of soldiers, who were then treated like charity patients. He immediately reported these conditions to the medical department, and the men were removed to the government hospitals, which were by this time systematized and in good running order.
After the patients had been transferred from the Long Island College Hospital, I secured a pass on the steamboat Thomas P. Way, to visit hospitals of the “Department of the East,” in charge of Surgeon McDougall, a thorough disciplinarian, and a just, kind man.
David’s Island, on the Sound, had a finely conducted hospital, with a diet kitchen in charge of ladies. There I saw hundreds of well-fed, happy Confederate patients, so many, indeed, that they could not be supplied at once with proper clothing, and so made a unique appearance as they walked about in dressing gowns, white drawers, and slippers. They were soon to be exchanged for our own poor skeleton “Boys” who were coming home slowly and painfully, some dying on the way, to be met by kindly hands and aching hearts eagerly awaiting them.
Fort Schuyler Hospital, on the East River, was formed like a wheel, the hub being headquarters and the spokes extending into wards for patients. One young man of much refinement had been at one of our home suppers, and afterwards the company made a pact that if we were alive one year from that date we should hear each from the other. He exclaimed—“Dead or alive, you shall hear from me!” Being a spiritualist he believed this possible. He was sent to Fort Schuyler and one month later died of small-pox. At the appointed date and hour a year later, I thought of this pact and tried to put myself in a receptive state. I did not, however, see him nor feel any manifestation of his spirit.