CHAPTER XIITHE LADY-IN-CHIEFThe Barrack Hospital—Overwhelming Numbers of Sick and Wounded—General Disorder—Florence Nightingale’s “Commanding Genius”—The Lady with the Brain—The Nurses’ Tower—Influence over Men in Authority.A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort and command;And yet a spirit still and bright,With something of an angel light.Wordsworth.
The Barrack Hospital—Overwhelming Numbers of Sick and Wounded—General Disorder—Florence Nightingale’s “Commanding Genius”—The Lady with the Brain—The Nurses’ Tower—Influence over Men in Authority.A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort and command;And yet a spirit still and bright,With something of an angel light.Wordsworth.
The Barrack Hospital—Overwhelming Numbers of Sick and Wounded—General Disorder—Florence Nightingale’s “Commanding Genius”—The Lady with the Brain—The Nurses’ Tower—Influence over Men in Authority.
A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort and command;And yet a spirit still and bright,With something of an angel light.Wordsworth.
A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort and command;And yet a spirit still and bright,With something of an angel light.Wordsworth.
A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort and command;And yet a spirit still and bright,With something of an angel light.
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright,
With something of an angel light.
Wordsworth.
Theofficial position which the Government had accorded Miss Nightingale was Superintendent of the Nursing Staff in the East, and the title by which she eventually became known was that of Lady-in-Chief.
Her control extended over the nursing staffs of all the hospitals, some eight in number, in which our wounded soldiers were placed on the Bosphorus and the Levantine. The first and chief scene of Miss Nightingale’s personal ministrations, however, was the great Barrack Hospital at Scutari, lent to the British Government by the Turkish authorities.It was beautifully situated on a hill overlooking the glittering waters of the Bosphorus, and commanded a view of the fair city of Constantinople, with its castellated walls, marble palaces, and domes, rising picturesquely on the horizon. No more enchanting prospect could have been desired than that which met the Lady-in-Chief when she reached Scutari, the “silver city,” held in such veneration by the Turks. The town seemed placed in a perfect Garden of Eden, and the lovely blue of the Eastern sky enhanced the beauty of the scene.
The Barrack Hospital was a fine handsome building, forming an immense quadrangle with a tower at each corner. An idea of its size may be gathered from the fact that each side of the quadrangle was nearly a quarter of a mile long. It was estimated that twelve thousand men could be exercised in the central court. Galleries and corridors, rising story above story, surrounded three sides of the building, and, taken continuously, were four miles in extent. The building and position were alike good, but the interior of the hospital, as Miss Nightingale soon discovered, was a scene of filth, pestilence, misery, and disorder impossible to describe. On either side the endless corridors the wounded men lay closely packed together without the commonest decencies or necessaries of life.
After being disembarked at the ferry below the hospital from the vessels which brought them from the battlefields of the Crimea, the wounded men either walked or were dragged or carried up the hill to the hospital. Surgical, fever, and even cholera cases came along the road together in one long stream of suffering humanity.
THE BARRACK HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI.
THE BARRACK HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI.
Several days had elapsed since the men left the battlefield, and the majority had not had their wounds dressed or their fractured limbs set. The agony and misery of the poor fellows in this untended and often starving state can be well imagined. And how their hearts sank when they at length reached the hospital, where at least they expected food and comfort. Alas! there was little provisionof any kind for the sufferers. Nolan, in his history of the campaign, says that in these early months of the war “there were no vessels for water or utensils of any kind; no soap, towels, or cloths, no hospital clothes; the men lying in their uniforms, stiff with gore and covered with filth to a degree and of a kind no one could write about; their persons covered with vermin, which crawled about the floors and walls of the dreadful den of dirt, pestilence, and death to which they were consigned.
“Medical assistance would naturally be expected by the invalid as soon as he found himself in a place of shelter, but many lay waiting for their turn until death anticipated the doctor. The medical men toiled with unwearied assiduity, but their numbers were inadequate to the work.” Invalids were set to take care of invalids and the dying nursed the dying.
It was a heart-breaking experience for the Lady-in-Chief when she made her first round of the wards at Scutari. The beds were reeking with infection and the “sheets,” she relates, “were of canvas, and so coarse that the wounded men begged to be left in their blankets. It was indeed impossible to put men in such a state of emaciation into those sheets. There was no bedroom furniture ofanykind, and only empty beer or wine bottles for candlesticks.”
In addition to the miseries entailed by overcrowding,the men lying on the floors of the corridors were tormented by vermin and their limbs attacked by rats as they lay helpless in their pain.
The immediate surroundings of the hospital were a hotbed of pestilence; Miss Nightingale counted six dogs lying under the windows in a state of decomposition. Add to this that in this vast caravanserai of wounded, sick, and dying men there was no proper provision for washing, no kitchens, culinary conveniences, or cooks suitable for hospital needs, and no sanitation, and some conception may be formed of the Augean stable which the Lady-in-Chief and her nurses had to cleanse, and the chaos out of which order was to be brought.
It is not altogether surprising that the doctors and hospital authorities did not immediately welcome the very unique band of sisters who had come to their assistance. These already overwrought gentlemen were disposed to think that the ladies would prove a greater hindrance than help. In those days it was regarded as unavoidable that a soldier should suffer, and humanitarian attempts to lessen the sufferings were considered sentimental and effeminate.
Possibly some of the younger medical men thought that the rats which infested the hospital would prove the needed scare to the newly arrived nurses. Of course it was held that the most strong-minded women would fly at the approach of a mouse:what therefore would be the effect of a rat? But this idea was dispelled when it was known that the Lady-in-Chief had fearlessly dislodged a rat from above the bed of one of the nurses with an umbrella. The sheds where the sisters sorted the stores were over-run with the pests. “Our home rats,” said one of them, “would run if you ‘hushed’ them; but you might ‘hush’ away, and the Scutari rats would not take the least notice.”
Only twenty-four hours after the arrival of Miss Nightingale at Scutari the wounded from the battle of Inkerman began to arrive in appalling numbers, and soon every inch of room in the General and in the Barrack Hospitals was filled with sufferers. Many of the men had indeed no other resting-place than the muddy ground outside. The Lady-in-Chief had had no time to initiate reform, collect stores, or get any plans for the relief of the patients into working order before this fearful avalanche of wounded soldiery came upon her.
BOULOGNE FISHERWOMEN CARRYING THE LUGGAGE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE AND HER NURSES.[To face p. 128.
BOULOGNE FISHERWOMEN CARRYING THE LUGGAGE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE AND HER NURSES.[To face p. 128.
BOULOGNE FISHERWOMEN CARRYING THE LUGGAGE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE AND HER NURSES.
[To face p. 128.
It was the testing moment of her life. Had Florence Nightingale failed at this crisis in personal endurance, or in power to inspire her subordinates with a like courage, her mission would have sunk into a benevolent futility. She and her nurses might have run hither and thither smoothing pillows, administering gruel, and doing other kind and womanly service, but grateful as that would be tothe poor fellows in their extreme misery, it would not have remedied the root of the evil. The Lady-in-Chief had to look beyond the present moment, though not neglectful of its demands, to the more important future, and institute a system of nursing reform which should make such scenes as she now witnessed impossible. It was her ability to do this which lifted Florence Nightingale into such a supreme position.
The attention and praises bestowed on her during the Crimean period roused a little jealousy and resentment in some quarters. Other women engaged in nursing the sick soldiers possibly thought that they had made equal personal sacrifices with Miss Nightingale—some indeed gave their life in the cause. Others again, returning to a life of seclusion after toiling through the arduous nursing of the campaign, might perhaps have felt some injustice that one name alone rang through the land, while others who also had borne the heat and burden of the day remained unhonoured and unsung. No one would wish to exempt from due praise even the humblest of that “Angel Band” who worked with Florence Nightingale and still less would she, but in every great cause there is the initiating genius who stands in solitary grandeur above the rank and file of followers.
Such was the Lady-in-Chief: she came toScutari as something far more even than an efficient nurse. She brought the organising and governing faculty and the brain power of which the officials in charge seemed bereft. Delicate, high-bred, and retiring in nature as Miss Nightingale was, she possessed the subtle quality which gave her command over others, that undefinable something which broke down the opposition of the most conservative obstructionist when he came under her personal influence. She was unfettered by precedent or red tape, and brought to her task a clear idea of the administrative mechanism which was needed to afford due care and provision for the prostrate soldiery.
Her woman’s nature was roused to indignation at the sight of suffering which she could only regard as the result of unbending and unthinking routine, and she brought her quick intuitions and agile brain to remedy the evil. When men were dying daily by the score for the want of suitable nourishment, she declined to listen to under officials who feared to disobey regulations by opening stores without the usual order, and took the responsibility of having the packages undone. The Lady-in-Chief was herself a strict disciplinarian, or she would never have brought order out of chaos, but she had humanity enough to know when the iron rule might be relaxed in the interests of those under her care. Her common sense, her spirit of unselfishdevotion, and her strong, though gentle, persuasiveness gradually overcame the prejudice of the constituted authorities against the new element introduced into hospital work.
Mr. Sidney Herbert in his letter to the Principal Medical Officer at Scutari (Dr. Menzies) announcing the coming of the nurses, had enjoined him “to receive with attention and deference the counsels of the Lady-in-Chief.” Great as was the power which the unflinching support of this distinguished man gave her, it was secondary to the influence which she attained by the force of her own character. The late Dean Stanley, who was not a man to misuse the English language, described Miss Nightingale’s faculty as “commanding genius.”
We read in the thrilling accounts of the period how the Lady-in-Chief went her rounds at night, passing along the endless corridors and through the hospital wards carrying a little lamp, the gleam of which lighted her progress of mercy and love. Dying men turned on their pillows to bless her shadow as it passed. In far-away New England the idea of “The Lady with the Lamp” inspired the muse ofLongfellow:—
A Lady with a Lamp shall standIn the great history of the land,A noble type of goodHeroic womanhood;
A Lady with a Lamp shall standIn the great history of the land,A noble type of goodHeroic womanhood;
A Lady with a Lamp shall standIn the great history of the land,A noble type of goodHeroic womanhood;
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood;
and it has remained the most beautiful and popular title bestowed upon Florence Nightingale, but at the risk of appearing modern and prosaic we venture to re-christen our heroine “The Lady with the Brain.”
When Miss Nightingale began her work, her energies were concentrated on the Barrack Hospital already described, and on the General Hospital at Scutari, which was a little farther removed. The other British hospitals in the East also came under her supervision, but Scutari claimed at first her undivided personal attention. Attached to her staff were the thirty-eight trained nurses who had accompanied her, the Rev. Sidney Osborne, the chaplain, and her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge of Atherstone Hall. Mrs. Bracebridge was to act as overseer of the housekeeping department. A most valuable helper also was Mr. Stafford, a young man of family who had left the drawing-rooms of Mayfair to go to Scutari and “fag” for the Lady-in-Chief. He wrote letters, went on missions of inquiry, and did anything and everything which a handy and gallant gentleman could do to make himself useful to a lady whom he felt honoured to serve.
Taken collectively, this little group may be termed the “party of reform” who were installed at Scutari at the beginning of the winter of 1854. Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, the wife of our Ambassadorat Constantinople, and her “beauteous guest,” Lady George Paget, were also most helpful in sending little comforts for the wounded officers, but it was said of Miss Nightingale that she “thought only of the men.” The common soldier was undoubtedly her chief concern.
THE LADY-IN-CHIEF IN HER QUARTERS AT THE BARRACK HOSPITAL.
THE LADY-IN-CHIEF IN HER QUARTERS AT THE BARRACK HOSPITAL.
The Lady-in-Chief and her staff had their quarters in a tower at one of the corners of the hospital, and the busy life which went on there fromday to day is thus described by the Rev. Sidney Osborne. “Entering the door leading into the Sisters’ Tower,” he writes, “you at once find yourself a spectator of a busy and interesting scene. There is a large room with two or three doors opening from it on one side; on the other, one door opening into an apartment in which many of the nurses and sisters slept, and had, I believe, their meals. In the centre was a large kitchen table: bustling about this might be seen the high-priestess of the room, Mrs. C——. Often as I have had occasion to pass through this room I do not recollect ever finding her absent from it or unoccupied. At this table she received the various matters from the kitchen and stores of the sisterhood, which attendant sisters or nurses were ever ready to take to the sick in any and every part of these gigantic hospitals. It was a curious scene, and a close study of it afforded a practical lesson in the working of true common-sense benevolence.
“The floor on one side of the room was loaded with packages of all kinds—stores of things for the internal and external consumption of the patients; bales of shirts, socks, slippers, dressing-gowns, flannel, heaps of every sort of article likely to be of use in affording comfort and securing cleanliness.... It was one feature of a bold attempt upon the part of extraneous benevolence to supply thedeficiencies of the various departments which as a matter of course should have supplied all these things.
“In an adjoining room 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 working under this most gifted head. This, too, was the office from which were sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters at home, telling such awful tales of the sufferings of the sick and wounded, their utter want of so many necessaries.”
We have in this description a glimpse into the beginning of the Lady-in-Chief’s organising work. In the sisters’ quarters she was from the first undisputed head, and by degrees the order and method which she established there affected every other part of the hospital.
While she was battling with red-tapism in order to get access to stores which lay unpacked in the vicinity of a hospital filled with poorly fed, badly clothed, and suffering men because nobody seemed to know who had the right to dispense them, sympathetic friends were keeping the store in the Sisters’ Tower replenished. But it was impossible to keep pace with the needs. The published letterssent home by the nursing staff at this period all contain requests for invalid requisites and clothing. The wounded were dying in scores for want of a little stimulant to rouse their exhausted systems when they first arrived at the hospitals, and men lying in clothing stiff with gore could not even procure a change of garment. As the cold increased, the frost-bitten patients, arriving from the trenches before Sebastopol, had not even the luxury of a warm shirt. One of the nurses writing home said: “Whenever a man opens his mouth with ‘Please, ma’am, I want to speak to you,’ my heart sinks within me, for I feel sure it will end in flannel shirts.”
The task of the Lady-in-Chief was to bring benevolent as well as neglectful chaos into order. She had to inquire into the things most urgently needed and advise her friends in England. All this was unexpected work, for it will be remembered that Mr. Sidney Herbert, in the letter inviting Miss Nightingale to go to Scutari, had dwelt on the fact, as he believed it, that the hospitals were supplied with every necessary. “Medical stores,” he had said, “had been sent out by the ton weight.”
Alas! through mismanagement, these stores had been rotting on the shore at Varna, instead of reaching Scutari, and much that had arrived was packed beneath heavy ammunition and difficult toget at. The loss of thePrince, laden with supplies, was a culminating disaster which occurred on November 14th, about two weeks after Miss Nightingale’s arrival.
The reticence of the hospital authorities prevented the true state of affairs from reaching the British public. Indeed, the whole Service, from commandant to orderly, conspired to say “All right,” when all was wrong. One of the sisters has described how this policy worked in the wards. An orderly officer took the rounds of the wards every night, to see that all was in order. He was of course expected by the orderlies, and the moment he raised the latch he received the word, “All right, your honour,” and passed on. This was hospital inspection!
In excuse for the officers who were thus easily put off, it may be said that the wards were filled with pestilence, and the air so polluted by cholera and fever patients that it seemed courting death to enter.
For that reason orderlies already on the sick list were set to act as nurses, and they often drank the brandy which it was their duty to administer to the patients, in order to keep up their spirits, or “drown their grief,” as they preferred to put it. Men in this condition became very callous. Those stricken with cholera had their sufferingsterribly enhanced by the dread of being buried alive, and used to beseech the orderlies not to send them to the dead-house until quite sure that they had breathed their last. Utter collapse was the last stage of Asiatic cholera, and the orderlies took little pains to ascertain when the exact moment of dissolution came; consequently numbers of still living men were hurried to the dead-house. One does not wish to hold up to blame and execration the seeming inhumanity of the orderlies. They were set to do work for which they were untrained and often physically unfit, and were also demoralised by the shocking condition of the wards. It was the system rather than individuals which was to blame.
Into these insanitary, filthy, and pestilential wards came the Lady-in-Chief, and she did not say “All right.” It was useless for officialdom to “pooh-pooh”: she, fortunately, had Government authority. What her quick eye saw was communicated to the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Raglan, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert at the War Office, and brought in due course the needed instructions for reform.
Not the least quality of the Lady-in-Chief was her influence over men in authority. She was not dictatorial, she was not aggressive, but she possessed the judgment which inspired confidence and the knowledge which compelled respectful attention.Her letters to the War Minister at home, and to Lord Raglan, the General in the field, were models of clear and concise documents, devoid of grumbling, rancour, or fidgety complaints, but they contained some appalling facts. Unerringly she laid her finger on the loose joints of the commissariat and hospital administration. By the enlightening aid of her letters from Scutari the Home Government was enabled to pierce the haze which surrounded the official accounts from the Bosphorus, and gradually the hospital management was put on a footing which harmonised with the Lady-in-Chief’s recommendations.
Lord William Paulet, who succeeded Major Sillery as Military Commandant at Scutari shortly after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, soon learned to place entire confidence in her judgment. “You will find her most valuable, ... her counsels are admirable suggestions,” wrote the War Minister to the new Commandant and Lord William proved the truth of the statement. Lord Raglan in one of his dispatches to the Duke of Newcastle said, “Lord William [Paulet] like Brown [Sir George Brown] speaks loudly in praise of Miss Nightingale,” adding that he was confident that she had “done great good.” As the weeks passed by, Lord Raglan grew to consider the Lady-in-Chief a most efficient auxiliary “general.”