XIXSISTER DORA
Oneof the most remarkable women who, in recent times, have devoted themselves to nursing and to the service of the sick poor, was Dorothy Wyndlaw Pattison, more generally known by the name of Sister Dora. She was a lady born and bred, well-educated, high-spirited, sweet-tempered, and handsome; full of fun and sense of humour, fond of hunting and other athletic exercises, and remarkably fond of her own way. As her own way was generally a good way, she was probably right in preferring it to the ways of other people. Strong determination, when it does not degenerate into stupid obstinacy, is one of the most useful qualities any human being can have. In Sister Dora’s case her strong will was a great secret of her success, but it also, in a few instances, led her into errors, which will easily be seen as the story of her life is told.
She was born, in 1832, at Hauxwell, in Yorkshire, a small village on the slope of a hill, looking towards the moors and Wensleydale. Her father was the clergyman of the village, and one of her brothers was the Rev. Mark Pattison, the well-known scholar and the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Dorothy Pattison was first roused to wish for something more than the ordinary occupations of a young lady’s life by the enthusiasm felt throughout England in 1856 for Miss Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimea. Dorothy wished to join Miss Nightingale’s band of lady nurses at the seat of war, but her parents’ opposition and her own want of training prevented her from carrying out this wish. From this time, however, she fretted against the life of comparative inactivity to which she was restricted so long as she remained in her village home. Some years were passed (wasted, we well may think) in unnecessary friction between herself and her father, she desiring to leave home, and he opposing her wishes in this respect. At last she did leave, in 1861, more or less in face of her father’s opposition; he declined to make her any allowance beyond what he had been accustomed to give her for pocket-money and clothes, and she had therefore to live partly on what she was able to earn. She obtained work as a village schoolmistress at Little Woolston, near Bletchley, and lived for three years in a small cottage, quite alone, without even a servant; her life at this time must have been very much like that described inJane Eyre, where the heroine gains her livelihood for a time by similar work. She showed, as a village schoolmistress, that keen sympathy with children and power over them which always distinguished her. She could enter, through her bright imagination, into the feelings and thoughts of children, and her playfulness and love of fun made her a real friend and companion to them. At Little Woolston, too, she did a good deal of amateur nursing for the parents and friends of her little pupils. Her biographer, Miss Lonsdale,[5]says that the people in the neighbourhood of the village were very quick to discover that the new schoolmistress was a real lady, but for some time they could not get over their astonishment if they found Miss Pattison blacking her own grate when they came to see her. She was, perhaps, the first instance they had come across of a cultivated woman who thought that “being a lady” was not inconsistent with working hard. Dirtiness, untidiness, and muddle vex the soul of the “real lady” far more than doing the work which produces cleanliness and order.
After three years at Little Woolston, Miss Pattison made what many must think was the great mistake of her life. Her strong will has already been spoken of; she had found by experience that she could not submit it even to the control of her own father, to whom she was naturally bound by strong feelings of affection. It was necessary to her to have freedom and scope for her energies, and to learn by self-government what she had failed to learn through the government of others. Notwithstanding the incompatibility of her nature with the absolute submission required in such institutions, Miss Pattison joined a High Church Sisterhood, at Coatham, called the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritan. It was part of the discipline of the sisterhood to require unquestioning obedience to all commands. The reason, the feelings, the natural piety of the novices were completely subordinated to obedience as their first and paramount duty. By way of training in unquestioning obedience, Sister Dora, as she was now called, was subjected to various tests of submissiveness; one day, for instance, after she had made all the beds, they were pulled to pieces again by the order of the Superior, and she was told to make them again. In some institutions of this kind, after the floor has been carefully and thoroughly scrubbed by a novice, some one enters, by order of the Superior, with mud or ashes, and purposely makes it dirty again; the novice is then ordered to return to her work and scrub the floor once more, and she is expected to do so without showing the least sign of disappointment or annoyance. It may be true that this system fosters the habit of unquestioning obedience, but if so it must be at the expense of other and more valuable qualities. This unnatural system is perverting to the moral sense and judgment, as Sister Dora, a few years later, found to her cost.
In 1865 she was sent by the sisterhood to Walsall, to take part in the nursing in a small cottage hospital. Towards the end of the year she received orders from the sisterhood to leave this work and take work as a nurse in a private case in the South of England. Walsall had not been trained to habits of unquestioning obedience; its inhabitants and the managers of the little hospital had already discovered Sister Dora’s fine qualities as a nurse. They resisted the order that would have deprived them of her services. While negotiations on this subject were proceeding between the Walsall people and the sisterhood at Coatham, news reached Miss Pattison from Hauxwell, to say that her father was dangerously ill and much desired to see her. She telegraphed to the sisterhood, telling them of her father’s serious illness, and asking permission to visit him. The answer, which was returned almost immediately, was a blank refusal, and she was bidden to proceed at once to Devonshire to nurse a stranger. Incredible as this may seem, it is still more incredible that the order was obeyed. Miss Pattison had not escaped the paralysis of moral sense which this cast-iron system produces; she turned her back on her home and proceeded to Devonshire. Her father died almost immediately, without ever seeing his daughter again. The shock of this event roused Sister Dora from the lethargy from which she had suffered. She was almost broken-hearted, and deeply resented the dictation to which she had been subjected. She ought to have seen, and probably did see, that the will, like all other powers of the mind and body, with which each one of us is endowed, is given to us to be used; we are responsible for its right use, and when we use it wrongly, as she did in this case (for it must have needed a very strong effort of will to resist the appeal of love and duty), it is we ourselves who must bear the punishment and endure the anguish of our fault. She did not immediately sever her connection with the sisterhood, but she began from that time to be less completely in thraldom to it. She finally quitted it in 1875, under circumstances which have not been made public. When a friend questioned her as to the cause, Sister Dora’s only reply was, “I am a woman, and not a piece of furniture.”
After her father’s death, Sister Dora returned to Walsall, and in this place practically the whole of the rest of her life was devoted to the service of the sick and of all who were desolate and oppressed. She plunged into her work with all the greater eagerness from her desire to forget herself and the many inward troubles and anxieties which oppressed her at this time. Her great desire was to become a first-rate surgical nurse. Walsall has been described by those who lived there as “one of the smokiest dens of the Black Country,” and the workers in the various factories of the locality were often frightfully injured by accidents with the machinery, or by burns and scalds. Sister Dora became marvellously skilful in what is known as “conservative surgery,” that is, the art of saving a maimed and crushed limb instead of cutting it off. A good old doctor at the hospital taught her all he knew; but she outgrew his instructions, and Miss Lonsdale gives an instance of a case in which Sister Dora saved a man’s right arm from amputation, in spite of the doctor’s strongly expressed opinion that the man would die unless his arm were taken off immediately. The arm was frightfully torn and twisted; the doctor said it must be taken off, or mortification would set in. Sister Dora said she could save the arm, and the man’s life too. The patient was appealed to, and of the two risks he chose the one offered by the Sister. The doctor did not fail, proud as he was of his pupil, to remind her that the responsibility of what he considered the patient’s certain death would be on her head. She accepted the responsibility, and devoted herself to her patient almost night and day for three weeks, with the result that the arm was saved. The doctor was the first generously to acknowledge her triumph, and he brought the rest of his medical colleagues to see what Sister Dora had done. The patient’s gratitude was unbounded; he often revisited the hospital simply to inquire for Sister Dora. He was known in the neighbourhood as “Sister’s Arm.” During an illness she had, this man used to walk every Sunday morning eleven miles to the hospital to inquire for her. He would say, “How’s Sister?” and on receiving a reply would add, “Tell her it’sher armthat rang the bell,” and walk back again. Sister Dora used to say when speaking of her period of suspense and anxiety in this case, “How I prayed over that arm!”
She was particularly skilful in her treatment of burns; sometimes she would take two poor little burnt or scalded babies to sleep in her own room. Those who have had experience in the surgical wards of hospitals know what an overpowering and sickening smell proceeds from burnt flesh. Sister Dora never seemed for a moment to think of herself or of what was disagreeable and disgusting in such cases as these. In one frightful accident in which eleven poor men were so badly burned that they resembled charred logs of wood more than human beings, nearly all the doctors and nurses became sick and faint a few minutes after they entered the ward where the sufferers lay, and were obliged to leave. Among the nurses Sister Dora alone remained at her post, and never ceased night or day for ten days to do all that human skill could suggest to alleviate the sufferings of the poor victims. Some died almost immediately, some lingered for a week or ten days; only two ultimately recovered. Her wonderful courage was shown not only in her readiness to accept responsibility, but in the way in which she was able to keep up her own spirits, and to raise the spirits of the patients through such a time of trial as this. She would laugh and joke, and tell the sick folks stories, or do anything that would help them to while away the time and bear their sufferings with fortitude and courage. She made her patients feel how much she cared for them, and that all she did for them was a pleasure, not a trouble. She used to provide them with a little bell, which she told them to ring when they wanted her. One poor man was reproached by the other patients for ringing his bell so often, especially as when Sister Dora arrived and asked him what he wanted, he not infrequently answered that he did not know. But Sister Dora never reproached him for ringing too often. “Never mind,” she would say brightly, “for I like to hear it;” and she told him that she often fancied when she was asleep that she heard his little bell, and started up in a hurry to find it was only a dream. She was so gay and bright and pleasant in her ways, giving her patients comical nicknames, and caressing and coaxing them almost as a mother would a sick child, that they regarded her with a deep love and veneration that frequently influenced them for good all the rest of their lives. Twice while she was at Walsall, there were frightful epidemics of small-pox, and on both occasions she showed extraordinary courage and devotion. She did not bear any charm against infection, and in fact generally caught anything that was to be caught in the way of infectious disease. Her courage, therefore, did not proceed from any confidence in her own immunity from danger. She deliberately counted the cost, and resolved to pay it, for the sake of carrying on her work. At the first outbreak of small-pox in Walsall there was no proper hospital accommodation for the patients; and Sister Dora nursed many of them in the overcrowded courts and alleys where they lived. She was called in to one poor man who was dying of a virulent form of the malady known as “black-pox.” He was a frightful object: all his friends and relations, except one woman, had forsaken him; when Sister Dora arrived, she found there was only one small piece of candle in the house, so she gave the woman money to go out and buy candles, and other necessaries. The temptation was too much for the poor woman, who must, after all, have been better than the patient’s other relatives and neighbours, for she had stayed with him when they had run away. But when the professional nurse arrived and gave her money, she ran away too, and Sister Dora was left quite alone with the dying man. Just as the one bit of candle flickered out, the poor man, covered as he was with the terrible disease, raised himself in bed and said, “Kiss me, Sister.” She did so, and the man sank back; she promised she would not leave him while he was alive, and his last hours were soothed by her presence. She passed hours by his side in total darkness, uncertain whether he were dead or alive; at last the gray light of early dawn came, and she was at liberty. Her promise was fulfilled; the man was dead.
At the second outbreak of small-pox at Walsall, hospital accommodation was provided for the patients; and the ambulance, a sort of omnibus fitted up to convey a patient and nurse, was frequently to be seen in the streets. Sister Dora was as strong as she was courageous; she would come to a house where a small-pox patient lay, and say she had “come for” so-and-so. Resistance and excuses were no good; she would take the patient, man or woman, in her arms as easily as she would a baby, and carry the burden down to the ambulance. Her presence cheered the whole town, and prevented the spread of that dastardly panic which sometimes comes over a place which is stricken by disease. An eye-witness described how every one in the town felt new courage at the sight of the ambulance and Sister Dora, “with her jolly face smiling out of the window.”
She spent six months at the small-pox hospital in 1875; and for a long time she was practically alone there with the patients; the doctors of course came by day, and three of her old patients constantly visited the hospital for the sake of seeing if they could do anything for her; and there were two nearly helpless old women from the workhouse, who were supposed to do part of the work; but she was absolutely alone as regards regular skilful assistance in the nursing and other work. The porter did what he could, showing his devotion by getting up early to scrub and clean for her; but he could hardly ever resist the temptation to go off “on the drink” whenever his wages were paid; on these occasions he would absent himself for four and twenty hours at a time. Once when this had happened, and Sister Dora was quite alone, a delirious patient, a tall, powerful man, flung himself out of bed in the middle of the night, and rushed to the door trying to make his escape. “She had no time for hesitation, but at once grappled with him, all covered as he was with the loathsome disease ... she got him back to bed, and held him there by main force till the doctor arrived in the morning.”
One of the trials of her work was that the small-pox patients were nearly all “alive” with vermin; added to this was the horror of the all-pervading smell of pox; in a letter to a friend, Sister Dora spoke of this, and said it was impossible to get away from it. “I taste it in my tea!” For months she never had her bonnet on, or went even as far as the gate; and yet she was able to look back on the time she spent in this hospital as one that had been very much blessed to her. With her High Church feelings about Lent, she wrote cheerfully in the letter already quoted, “Is not this a glorious retreat for me in Lent? I can have no idle chatter.” In another letter, she wrote, “I am still a prisoner, surrounded by my lepers. I do feel so thankful that I came.... I thank God daily for my life here.”
Endless instances might be given of her physical and moral courage; once, when she was in a third-class railway carriage with a lot of rough navvies, who were swearing and using horrible language, she boldly reproved them; they laid hands on her, one of them exclaiming, “Hold your jaw, you fool; do you want your face smashed in?” She remained quite calm, not struggling, although they were holding her down on the seat between them. When the train reached a station, they let her go, and she got out of the carriage, and one of the men begged her pardon, saying, “Shake hands, mum! you’re a good plucked one, you are; you were right, and we were wrong.” Another time in the hospital, a half-drunken man, flashily dressed, rang the bell in the night, and on the door being opened forced his way into the hall, and demanded a bed. The night nurse on duty was unable to get rid of him, and Sister Dora was summoned. The man reiterated his determination to stay all night, and Sister Dora contented herself with barring his access to the patients by standing erect on the last step of the stairs with her arms spread from the wall to the balusters. The man seated himself opposite to her, the nurse fled shrieking, and the two waited, staring at one another, each hoping the other would be the first to tire of the situation. Presently the man made a rush down the passage towards the kitchen door, but Sister Dora was too quick for him, and by the time he had reached it she was there with her arms spread across it, as on the stairs, to bar his way. She expected he would knock her down, but instead of doing so he muttered some compliment to her courage, and turned on his heel and left the place.
She had a very strong personal influence for good on the poor rough people, both men and women, for whom she worked. Her religion was one more of deeds than of words, and they saw that both in word and deed it was genuine. Many a one has dated a new start in life from the time he came under her care. Sometimes patients, waking in the night, would find her praying by their bedsides, and it touched them deeply to see how sincerely and truly she cared for them. Although she had the hearty sense of fun already alluded to, no man could ever venture on a coarse word or jest in her presence, and she inspired a good “tone” in the wards even when they were occupied by the roughest and poorest. As time went on there was hardly a slum or court in the lowest part of Walsall where she was not known, and hardly a creature in the town that did not feel he owed something to her. Although most of her time was given to healing bodily troubles, all her patients felt that she cared for something higher in them than their bodies. She joined heartily in several missions that were started with the object of reaching the lowest and most outcast; she would go quite fearlessly at midnight into the haunts of the most degraded men and women of the town, and induce them, for a while at least, to pause and consider what their lives had been given to them for. Once, we are told, when she was on her way to a patient’s house at night, she had to pass through one of the worst slums of the town. A man ran out of a notorious public-house and said, “Sister, you’re wanted; they’ve been fighting, and a man’s hurt desperate.” Even she hesitated momentarily, and the thought passed through her mind that she might be murdered. But her hesitation did not last sufficiently long to be visible; she followed the man immediately, taking comfort characteristically in the thought, “What does it matter if I am murdered?” To her astonishment, as soon as she reached the group of men, brutalised apparently almost below the level of humanity, a way was respectfully made for her, and every hat was taken off as she passed to the side of the wounded man.
But the time was approaching when the hand of death was to be laid upon this wonderful woman in the midst of all her labours. She was only about forty-four years of age, when she discovered that she was stricken by an incurable and terribly painful disease. It was a sign both of her strength and of her weakness that she insisted on keeping this fact absolutely secret. She, who had always been so strong, could not bear to acknowledge that her strength had come to an end. She, who had been so ready to give sympathy, could not bear to accept it. She went on with her work, bearing her pain silently and proudly, and admitting no one to her confidence. In order more completely to conceal her illness, she left Walsall for a time; and those who remained in charge of the hospital did not dream but that her absence was merely temporary. With the knowledge that her days on earth were numbered, she still went on studying her profession. She attended some of Professor Lister’s operations in London in order to become acquainted with his antiseptic process, and she went to the Paris Exhibition especially to study the surgical appliances shown there. Then presently she came back to Walsall, in October 1878. In November of the same year the Mayor opened a new hospital in her name; she was too ill to be present. Up to the last the townspeople could not believe that their “dear lady” was really to be taken from them, especially as her vitality was so strong that she rallied again and again, when those about her thought that the end was near at hand. She never lost her old habit of joking and making fun out of the dismal circumstances of sickness. Her arm, which became terribly swollen and helpless, she nicknamed “Sir Roger,” and she laughed at her doctors because she lived longer than they had predicted she would. She quite chuckled over the idea that she had “done the doctor again.” Her life was prolonged till 24th December 1878. The grief throughout the district when it was known that death had removed her was overpowering. The veneration and gratitude of the whole town found expression in many schemes for memorials in her honour. The working people wished most of all for a statue of their dear lady. The wish was gratified, through Miss Lonsdale’s generous aid, in the autumn of 1886. A pure white marble statue now stands in a central position of the smoky town of Walsall, commemorating the life and labours of one of the best of this generation of Englishwomen. Her work is another illustration of the text, “He that is greatest among you, shall be your servant.”
5.Sister Dora: a Biography.By Margaret Lonsdale.
5.Sister Dora: a Biography.By Margaret Lonsdale.