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White Slaves

L >> Louis A Banks >> White Slaves




Most of the women are kept at Rainsford Island, and there are many more
reasons for criticism there than on Long Island. The only hospital
there is an old smallpox hospital, more than three-score years old.
This is crowded beyond all thought of the requirements of sanitary
science. Think of a room for confinement cases only seven feet wide and
less than twelve feet long. In the annual report of Public Institutions
for 1889 we find the following statement by the then resident
physician: "It is remarkable that a building which was a small-pox
hospital fifty-seven years ago, and which since then has undergone no
material improvement, should up to the present time be the only
hospital connected with our pauper institutions." The doctor might have
added that this building was abandoned a quarter of a century ago by
the State, as unfit for sick persons. It is certainly no extravagance
to say that these arrangements for the care of the sick on Rainsford
Island are more than half a century behind the times. The only thing
modern I saw was the keen-eyed physician.

There is about the entire institution a lack of careful thoughtfulness
for the comfort of the inmates, that is exceedingly painful to a
thoughtful observer. For example, the island is very beautifully
situated, and there are many fine trees in the shade of which, with
comfortable arrangements, it would be a most healthful and delightful
experience for hundreds of these infirm and aged women to sit on summer
days; but, although I searched carefully throughout the grounds, I
found only two benches under the trees anywhere, and a half-dozen more,
perhaps, around on the sea-front, and not one of them with a back to
it. Think of arranging for the comfort of your own grandmother, eighty
years old, in that way!

The food here, too, is insufficient. For instance, the matron told me
that only those who worked were allowed butter on their bread. These
old women are set down to bread and tea for one meal, and bread and
soup for another; they, too, have a little meat of some kind three
times a week, and potatoes at dinner. Again I repeat that, with the
large farm attached to Long Island, there is no reason why these old
women, as well as the old men, should not have an abundant quantity and
an appetizing variety of vegetables, as well as plenty of nourishing
milk. And I maintain that it is a shame and disgrace that the Boston
which less than five years ago could spend more than twenty thousand
dollars in feasting and wining a Hawaiian woman who came to visit us,
expending four thousand dollars for flowers alone, cannot afford to
furnish a little butter to spread on the bread of the helpless old
women on Rainsford Island, even if they are unable to work. Think of
the stolid indifference, or thoughtlessness--to hunt for charitable
words--of an institution having several hundreds of people to care for,
and yet making no difference in its hospital diet. No matter what the
disease, it is to eat up to the cast-iron programme, or starve. Who
that has been ill or has watched anxiously with their own dear ones,
but has noticed the capriciousness of a sick person's appetite, the
longing for little delicacies, for just a taste of some rare and
unusual dish or drink? Such things are not expensive; they only mean
that somebody shall invest a little genuine sympathy and thoughtfulness
in the matter. Throughout this entire institution, hospital and all,
having over four hundred women, there is not a single trained nurse! In
this day of enlightenment it ought to be a crime for any hospital to be
carried on without trained nurses. There is no night watchman on the
whole island, and, after eight o'clock in the evening, nobody who is
responsible at all. In the main institution on Rainsford Island the
attic is crowded with beds to such an extent as to make a healthful
atmosphere impossible.

You must remember that many people here are paupers through no fault of
their own. Many of them are victims of incurable disease; and, as
against such cases the Boston hospitals are closed, the almshouse is
for them the only open door. Public sentiment must be aroused to
demand, with Florence Nightingale, that "work-house sick shall not be
work-house inmates, but they shall be poor sick, cared for as sick who
are to be cured if possible, and treated as becomes a Christian country
if they cannot be cured." We people who are followers of Him who
confessed, "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but
the Son of man hath not where to lay His head," cannot afford to treat
people who are, through misfortune, in the same condition to-day as
though they were some species of criminal, rather than as the hostages
of our Christ. Perhaps you say these people are not appreciative, are
not refined, do not have fine feelings--how do you know that? That is
doubtless true about some of them, but about many of them nothing could
be more false. People do not lose their powers of appreciation when
they lose their money, and I doubt not that these people would average,
in the essential characteristics of manly and womanly character, with
the same number of people of the same age you could gather from the
homes along your street. Last Christmas some kind-hearted women went
down to Rainsford with some gifts for the sick poor. One of them,
writing about their reception, says: "It was very touching to see the
happiness our little gifts conferred. The first was a poor old woman,
more than eighty, nearly blind from cataracts over her eyes. She is
called 'Welsh Ann' because she is from Wales. My friend told her I had
been in Wales. She seemed so glad to shake hands with one who had been
in her own country, and her voice choked with tears as she thanked me
and took my gift. But she brushed the tears away from her poor
sightless eyes while my friend repeated to her the Twenty-third Psalm,
and then at her request knelt and prayed. The apron which I gave her
has quite a history. A girl who earns her own living, hearing I was
making these aprons, sent me this one which she bought. It was worked
across the bottom, and I thought, as poor Ann rubbed her hands over the
work she could not see, but only touch, how cheered the young lady
would be when she heard of the joy her gift gave. I was asked to give
one pretty apron to another Ann--one they called 'Greenland Ann,'
because she is so very fond of hearing them sing 'From Greenland's icy
mountains.'" And surely that spirit of the Christ, which is warm enough
to impel men to dare the frost of "Greenland's icy mountains" in order
to comfort with His blessed Gospel their Esquimau brother, ought to
prompt us to deal thoughtfully and tenderly with the dear old soul that
likes to hear Him sung about on Rainsford Island.

I shall never forget the impression made upon me by Mark Guy Pearse,
one of the greatest of the English preachers, in his story of how he
was ordained a preacher. He said: "It was no bishop or presbytery that
consecrated me, but a saintly Cornish woman, whom we children called
old Rosie, and who was, indeed, my right reverend mother in God.

"So far as I can recollect, it was always sun-shiny when we visited old
Rosie, though of course it must have rained sometimes. She had a single
room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip
led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except
the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch.
There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through
the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost
every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and
of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too;
there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her
beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven
long years. She is a hundred and five years old, and her hair is snowy
white, yet there is not a wrinkle on her brow, and her cheeks have the
rosy brightness from which she gets the familiar name. All her
relations are gone, and she is now a pauper with only two or three
shillings a week from the parish.

"We might call her poor and lonely and bedridden, yet she is brimful of
happiness. The Bible is constantly at her hand, and she is generally
thanking God for all His mercies. She has lived in the light and love
of the Saviour since she was eleven years old; and she has gone so long
and so far in the good way, that now it is as if she were sitting just
outside the golden gates, crowned with radiant beauty and clothed with
white raiment, waiting until her Lord shall bid her enter.

"At dear old Rosie's bed we used to have a little service; first a
chapter read from the Bible, then a hymn--'Rock of Ages' was her
favorite, sung to 'Rousseau's Dream.' When the prayer was over, old
Rosie would lay her thin hand on the little lad's curly head, and say
as she turned her face upward, 'O Lord, bless the little lad! Bless him
and make him a preacher.' I didn't like that prayer of hers, and I used
to say to myself, 'I will never be a preacher; I will be a doctor, and
gallop about the country visiting people.' But one Sunday, after the
service and her little prayer, she said 'good-by' to us all. 'You won't
see me any more; so it must be good-by for a long time now, until we
meet at home.' We wondered what she meant. Two days after, she was
carried home by God's angels from her lonely room. My little heart was
like to break at the thought of never seeing her again; and I went out
by myself to the garden and prayed, 'Please God, I don't care so much,
after all, if I become a preacher, if it will make dear Rosie any
happier.'"

It would be better for us that a millstone were hanged about our necks,
and we were cast into the depths of the sea, than that we should be
thoughtless or indifferent of one of God's poor, like old Rosie.

Well, you ask, how can it be made better? My answer is that there ought
to be a radical change in the Board of Control of Public Institutions.
I do not make any personal fight on the three men now in control. I
make war on the whole system. As it is now, there are, in and about
Boston, ten public institutions, occupied by thousands of men and women
and children, carried on at an expense of nearly six hundred thousand
dollars, entirely under the control of three commissioners. This is not
wise. There ought to be a large advisory board made up of distinguished
citizens. This should be composed of women as well as men. It is
certainly a very short-sighted and thoughtless arrangement that,
although there are in these institutions several hundred women and
children, there is no woman who has any authorized interest in them.
There is every reason why women should be on the Boards of Control of
Public Institutions. The editor of the New York _Nation_ says:
"Whatever improvement there has been in the condition of Bellevue
Hospital, for example, and of the hospitals of Blackwell's and Hart's
Islands, during the past twenty years--and it is very great--has, as a
rule, been due to women's initiative and labors."

The fact is, that everything that concerns health, education, and good
morals occupies the minds of women more than it does the minds of most
of their husbands and fathers; and in every department of municipal
administration, where the conditions of the streets, of the sewers, of
the hospitals and almshouses, and of the police, are in question, women
have an equal interest with men, and in order to the public well-being
and safety, ought to have an equal voice. I am sure that an advisory
board of leading citizens, on which were three or four level-headed,
humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment
of Boston's paupers. Do not put this question aside. This is Boston's
question, and you are a part of Boston. As some one sang in the Boston
_Transcript_ not long ago:--

"Lazarus lies at your gate!
O proud and prosperous city,
How long will you let him wait?
Listen and look; have pity.

Dives, oh, cannot you hear,
For the music and dance of your high land,
The moaning of misery drear
That comes from the desolate island?

Finest of linen you wear;
Comrades in luxury you cherish,
Sumptuous daily you fare.
What of your neighbors who perish?

When you would heighten your cheer
By a contrast that's very dramatic,
Fancy what scenes may appear
In a certain dim hospital attic.

Swarming and sweltering, and scant
Of air,--foul to soul as to senses,--
Where he that is guilty of Want
Meets a doom fit for graver offences.

Worn-out, the pauper nurse sleeps;
The sufferer, forsaken, is crying
With no one to moisten his lips,--
No one to mark that he's dying.

Who should hear the _catch_ in his breath
'Mid the coughs, curses, ravings, resounding
Through the ward o'er the bed of his death,
From the close-crowded pallets surrounding?

And picture the scenes, to come
Perhaps, of another sorrow
Nearer your stately home,--
That you will not have to borrow;

When hushed is all merry din,
And your smiling guests have vanished;
When your flowers come blooming in,
To be glanced at once and banished;

When vain are all the crafts
That Mammon serve, and never
Tour costliest, coolest draughts
Can quench the fire of your fever;

When your street is red with tan,
And your oft-pulled door-bell muffled,
That the peace of a dying man
By no faintest sound be ruffled;

When love, to give you rest,
Doth toil with soothings fruitless;
And skill has done its best,
And the town's best skill is bootless;

When the chaises leave the place,
And the helpless, poor patrician
Lies looking up in the face
Of only the Great Physician,--

God grant it with joy may be
That you hear, 'What you did toward others
Ye have done it unto Me,
In the least of those My brothers!'

Lazarus lies at your gate;
Our kindly dear old city,
Let him no longer wait;
Open the doors of your pity!"




XI.

COMMENT ON "OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THE BOSTON PAUPERS".


"There is no caste in blood,
Which runneth of one hue, nor caste in tears,
Which trickled salt with all."


Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln, who has given a large amount of time and
painstaking interest to the treatment of the paupers, and who deserves
more credit than any one else for the present hopeful campaign in their
behalf, writes as follows in the _Boston Transcript_ of August 28:--

"Those of your readers who were kind enough to follow in your columns,
last winter, the articles for which you courteously made space there
concerning the poor of Boston, will, I think, be interested to know
what has since been done for the islands, and why so much controversy
is aroused by the sermon of Dr. Banks on the paupers.

"Early in the spring two new commissioners were appointed. It was hoped
that this change in the board would bring about good results, but, in
point of fact, matters remained much the same. The appropriation for a
new hospital, though made months ago, was not acted upon until this
week, when bids for the building were opened."

[Illustration: WOMEN'S HOSPITAL WARD AT LONG ISLAND.]
[Footnote: This is the best hospital ward on the two islands. Screen
shown on the right, behind which is a dying woman.]

"On August 5, I had the honor to lay before the commissioners eight
requests on behalf of the inmates of the island, as follows:--

1. More occupation for the able-bodied.

2. More comfortable chairs for the aged women, who are obliged to rise
at 5:30 A.M., and are not allowed to lie down without permission.

3. More benches out of doors for the benefit of the inmates.

4. A separate room for the dying (it having been urged by both the
physician and superintendent that the cries of dying patients often
disturbed a whole ward for several nights).

5. More privacy for women in bathing (and it will, perhaps, shock your
readers, as it did the writer, that one of the commissioners affirmed
and repeated that he did not consider this necessary).

6. Another nurse at Long Island, where Miss O'Brian has charge of
fifty-two sick women and where there is no bath-room.

7. Another nurse at the Main Institution Building on Rainsford Island,
where the laundry-matron has charge of forty-two sick women in addition
to her other duties, and with no assistance except what is given her by
inmates.

8. A new matron for the hospital. My reason for making this last
request is that I believe the present matron to be inefficient. She has
had no previous hospital training to fit her for her duties, and
certainly the hospital and its patients, when I last saw them, bore
evidences of neglect. The beds were not clean, and the patients showed
a lack of personal cleanliness and care. When I first visited the
hospital the floors were dirty and the closets were unwashed, but there
has been an improvement in those respects. I was present when dinner
was served to thirty patients in one ward--or, indeed, to seventy
inmates of the hospital--and the matron took no charge of the food,
which was put before the patients in a most uninviting manner--a great
contrast to the neat wooden trays which are in use at Tewksbury.
Moreover, I discerned a want of interest in the patients, to which the
matron herself bore testimony when she said that she never washed a
wound, and was engaged as a matron--not as a nurse.

"These, then, were the grounds upon which I asked for the appointment
of another nurse or matron, and fortunately one has applied for the
position entirely without my knowledge or solicitation. One of the
commissioners doubted whether a trained hospital emergency nurse could
be found to go to the islands; but this offer seems to set that
question at rest, and it is to be hoped her application may be
considered favorably.

"I also had the honor to lay before the commissioners the report of one
of my former tenants, who was an inmate of Rainsford Island a little
more than a year ago.

"She was a young woman who went down there because of a lump in her
breast, taking her baby with her. But for the baby she would have been
admitted to the City Hospital: but she did not like to leave her child,
and her husband, who was absent, was unable to care for it.
Consequently, she became for the time an inmate of the Rainsford Island
Hospital.

"She complained first of the indignity of having to strip in the
presence of others, no screen or curtain being provided as a shelter to
the necessary bath, which is the first step on entrance to an
institution.

"During her stay of three weeks she had no towel given to her, and only
one clean sheet was furnished.

"She was expected to cook all the food for her baby, and to make and
clean her own bed, although she was partly incapacitated by the lump in
her breast, which affected one arm.

"The food was very poor and unsatisfactory; and when she complained
that the porridge was sour, the matron told her if she did not like it
she could leave it.

"Worse than all, her baby fell ill on a Wednesday; she could obtain no
medicine for it until Sunday (though she asked for it repeatedly), and
on Monday the baby died.

"The mother left the institution the next day. She speaks in the
highest terms of the physician in charge and of the assistant, Miss
McDonald, at Rainsford Island; but she says the matron never did
anything for her and was not with her when the baby died; also, that
the milk and other food ordered for the patients is often not received
by them. And in this respect her statement is corroborated by the
remarks of another woman, also my tenant, who was an inmate of Long
Island when it was first opened for women several years ago. This woman
told me, with bated breath, that the food was miserable--it was killing
her; and, indeed, she died soon after, though I think grief hastened
her end."

[Illustration: GETTING A BREATH OF FRESH AIR.]

"It is because I have seen these people in their own homes that I feel
such sympathy for them as paupers. They have known the comfort and
independence of their own surroundings, and if by reason of old age or
sickness--through no fault of their own--they become paupers, they
should at least be treated with clue consideration and nursed with all
tenderness. I am entering no plea for the lazy and idle and intemperate
class who seek the refuge of an almshouse, and for whom, as Dr. Banks
says, the work-house is the proper place; but I do say that old or sick
people, even if paupers, are entitled to the very best care. We do not
begrudge it to them in our City Hospital or our State almshouse;
therefore, why is it too much to require it of the city of Boston's
pauper hospitals?

"No wonder that an attack such as has been made by Dr. Banks meets with
violent opposition and denial. He is attacking institutions whose
officials depend for their bread and butter on the positions which they
fill. But Dr. Banks and I have no 'axe to grind,' and he is only
stating the truth when he says that the pauper institutions at
Rainsford Island are overcrowded (so overcrowded that nearly fifty old
women sleep in a close and stifling attic, under the roof), and that
the fare, especially for the old and sick, is not what it should be."

The _Boston Herald_ of August 30 begins an exhaustive article, more
than five columns long, by saying:--

"For some time there has been an earnest and vigorous agitation going
on regarding the management and condition of Boston's pauper
institutions at Long and Rainsford Islands. Heretofore this agitation
has been out of the sight of the general public, with the exception of
a few letters which have appeared from time to time in the papers;
consequently, the sermon of Rev. Louis Albert Banks last Sunday on the
subject came like a revelation to many.

"The _Herald_ had been making a thorough investigation of the charges
brought, previous to Mr. Banks' utterances, and this has been continued
up to the present time, in order that the people of Boston may know
accurately and to the fullest the precise condition of its pauper
institutions and their inmates. As a result of that investigation, it
may be boldly said that the criticisms which have been made public do
not give an adequate idea of the disgraceful condition in which the
institutions are at present, nor the treatment which the paupers
receive and under which they exist rather than live.

"This statement is a strong one, but it can be borne out by facts which
are indisputable."

In the course of this long article, which fully sustains all statements
set forth in my discourse, the _Herald_ reporter, commenting on the
crowded condition of the buildings on Rainsford Island, says:--

"It is in the main building at Rainsford that the greatest lack of even
decent surroundings prevails, and where the condition of the inmates is
the worst. Here the fault seems to lie not only with the commissioners,
but with the matrons in charge, for there is no system discernible in
the housekeeping arrangements whatever. The infirmary is occupied by
those women who are not able to get about; and the rooms composing that
part of the building are pleasant and airy of themselves, but they are
spoiled by their keeping. There is no classification of inmates, and
old and young are all together, as well as the vicious and the
unfortunate.

"Another classification which might be made was suggested by the
presence of two women who were so unfortunate as to be afflicted in
such a manner that the whole air of the room was contaminated on their
account. This was through no fault of their own, and they should not be
made to suffer for it; but it seems hardly fair that all the other
women should be compelled to breathe the air made foul by their
presence. Add to this detriment to health and decent living the bad
sanitary arrangements, and the result is, indeed, open to criticism.

"This building is so old and antiquated that it originally had no place
provided inside for water-closets and bath-rooms. In putting these in
they were built directly in the corners of the rooms; and these corners
were then partitioned off, but for some unknown reason the partitions
were not continued up to the ceilings, the result being that the
closets were practically left in the room and a screen put around.
Owing to the fact that there is no water on the island, it all being
brought in tanks by steamer, there is not that abundance used in
flushing out the bowls which otherwise might be the case, and which
would go so far toward removing the horrible odor which is so prevalent
in every part of the building. Aside from the discomfort in being
obliged to smell this odor continually, the danger to the health of the
inmates is a serious thing.

"Throughout the wards in this building there is considerable
overcrowding, although not to the extent that is to be seen in another
part. The beds are all cared for by the women themselves, and
conversation with the matron showed that there was a regular time for
changing the bed linen, although that time was not the same in any two
rooms, and the writer, after continued questioning and asking for
explanation, failed to discover that there was any regularity whatever
about it.

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