Miss Lonsdale on Guy's Hospital.

  • Walter Moxon
Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Miss Lonsdale on Guy's Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Loag our late matron, who was trained as a sister of the hospital, and who fulfilled with unfailing ability all the duties Miss Lonsdale indi- cates. The only difference is, that in describing Miss Loag one would not make absolute authority/' gentlewoman, supreme authority, so prominent. For she is one of Nature's gentlewomen, and her tact and sweetness were such that whilst her supremacy was always admitted it was never asserted as absolute. Her supremacy was so- natural, it was taken for granted. Further, this lady whom Miss Lons- dale flippantly tickets as an upper servant went beyond the ideal matron's qualifications, finding time in her vacations to visit English and Conti- nental hospitals, thus enlarging her experience of the care of the sick. I say all this about the personnel of Miss Lonsdale's contrast, be- cause, in fact, the so-called new system is not well described by that term, for it is not so much the system that is new as the people that are so; and this new system represents in short a determination to change the personnel of Guy's sisters, and to substitute for our old sisters the closest approach possible to a religious sisterhood of an aristocratic turn,— at least mixed with and looking to aristocracy. Only for some such religious object could any lady write as Miss Lonsdale writes. Hence it is that social superiority is thrust forward at every turn as the character of the new system. Hence the old sister is scornfully touched as an ex-charwoman, and a housekeeper, not to speak of a suspected thief and tippler; whilst the new sister, it is suggested, will be a sister in the proper sense of the word (the italics are mine). An air of aristocratic fashionable sister- hood pervades the article. The sister should be not only a gentle- woman by birth, the matron ought invariably to be a gentle- woman, whilst we are informed that nursing is rapidly becoming a fashionable mania. But the nurses under the old system arc usually drawn from ff the class to ^-hich the domestic charwoman belongs. What fine contempt! The domestic charwoman! The gentlewoman by birth ! Before Miss Lonsdale the class that furnishes the domestic charwoman might be a kind of cockroaches. Does the lady know that the class in question is the class of domestic servants? Does the lady know how the domestic charwoman is furnished by the class ? This is usually the way : some gentlewoman by birth or otherwise uses up the good years of the poor woman's life in domestic service, and then when she is no longer fit for service the poor woman becomes a domestic charwoman j or the good servant marries and loses her husband, and forthwith is a domestic charwoman to keep her children. I could give striking instances if any one has not enough about his own doors. But the practical point is, that the class of domestic servants has always furnished the great bulk of nurses, and still continues to do so. Is not the new matron of Guy's now engaging domestic servants for nurses on the new system and applying at ordinary registry-offices for them ? It is to this source you must come wheu you want a large
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