About My Father's Business

It should be remembered that the Seaford Hospital is not for the sick, but for persons recovering from sickness, – those for whom the best medicines are regular and ample meals, grand bracing air, sea-baths, long hours of quiet and restorative sleep, and that general direction of their daily progress towards complete recovery, which will often make them strong and set them up completely, even in the twenty-eight days of their sea-side sojourn.

To send patients who require the medical care and attendance which can only be provided in a hospital for the special disorders from which they suffer, or who are afflicted with incurable diseases, is unjust, both to the poor creatures themselves and to the charity which cannot receive them.

For consumptive patients, except in the early or threatening stage of phthisis, Seaford is unsuitable, but a month at the hospital for patients of consumptive tendency has been known to produce remarkably beneficial results. It is in cases of recovery after rheumatism and rheumatic fever, or when strength is required after painful or exhausting surgical operations, in nervous depression, debility, pleurisy, and recovery from accidents, that the fine air is found to be wonderfully invigorating; for Seaford is high and dry, the subsoil being sand resting on chalk, so that there is little surface evaporation, while the shelter afforded by Beachy Head screens this little bay of the coast from the east wind.

It is not to be wondered at that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the late Bishop of Winchester should have joined many of the London clergy, and more than eighty of the most eminent physicians and surgeons connected with metropolitan hospitals, to recommend this charity as one especially deserving of public support. Those who are ever so superficially acquainted with the homes and difficulties of the poorer classes in London know that the period of debility after sickness, when the general hospital has discharged the patient, or when the parish doctor has taken his leave, is a terrible time. Too weak to work, without means to buy even common nourishment at the crisis when plentiful food is requisite, and stimulated to try to labour when the heart has only just strength to beat, men and women are ready to faint and to perish unless helping hands be held out to them. Try to imagine some poor cabman or omnibus-driver, lying weak and helpless after coming from a hospital; think of the domestic servant, whose small savings have all been spent in the endeavour to get well enough to take another place; of the poor little wistful, eager-eyed errand-boy, scantily fed, and with shaking limbs, that will not carry him fast enough about the streets. Try to realise what a boon it must be to a letter-carrier, slowly recovering from the illness by which he has been smitten down, or to the London waiter, worn and debilitated by long hours of wearying attendance to his duties, to have a month of rest and, re-invigoration at a place like this. In the table of inmates during the last few years are to be found a host of domestic servants, mechanics and apprentices, warehousemen and labourers, 36 housewives (there is much significance in that word, if we think of the poor wife or mother to be restored to her husband and children), 46 needlewomen, 19 clerks, 15 teachers (mark that) 41 school-children, 9 nurses, 1 policeman, 3 seamen and watermen, 1 letter-carrier, 4 errand-boys, 7 Scripture-readers, and others of various occupations.

It is no wonder, I say, that the general hospitals should regard this Convalescent Home at Seaford as a boon; but, unfortunately for the charity, the appreciation which it receives from some of those wealthy and magnificently-endowed institutions operates as a very serious drain on its own limited resources, which are only supplied by voluntary subscriptions, contributions, and legacies. Every subscriber of a guinea annually, and every donor of ten guineas in one sum, has the privilege of recommending one patient yearly, with an additional recommendation for every additional subscription of one guinea, or donation of ten guineas. The payment of five shillings a week by each patient admitted is also required by the guarantee of a householder written on the nomination paper, and the travelling expenses of the patient must also be paid, the Brighton Railway Company most benevolently conveying patients to the hospital by their quick morning train, in second-class carriages at third-class fare.

Now it is quite obvious that the five shillings a week, though it removes the institution from the position of an absolute charity, goes but a very short distance in providing for the needs of the inmates, and when the guinea contribution is added to it, there is still a very wide margin to fill before much good can be effected. Let us see, then, what is the effect of every subscription of a guinea representing a claim, as in the case of the patients sent from the general hospitals.

The cost of those admirable medicines, food and drink, wine, milk, and sea-baths, together with the expenses of administration, and the rental will represent at least £4 8s. per head for each patient, and as Guy's, Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, and the London Hospitals, each subscribing their ten guineas annually, demand their ten nominations in exchange, the account stands thus: —

For each case, five shillings per week for four weeks, and one guinea subscription = £2 1s., which, deducted from the actual cost (£4 8s.), leaves £2 7s. to be paid out of the funds of the Seaford Institution, which, on ten patients a year, represents £23 10s. as the annual contribution of this poor little charity to each of the four great charitable foundations of the metropolis.

But there is now an opportunity for acknowledging this obligation, and for recognizing the useful career of this really admirable institution. The lease of the present house has already expired, and the committee have been obliged to give up possession. It is therefore necessary to support the new hospital for those who need the aid that such a charity alone can give, and the building has already been erected, only a few yards further in the shelter of the bluff, where it has provided another home. With a commendable anxiety to keep strictly within their probable means, the committee have decided not to imitate a too frequent mode of proceeding, by which a large and splendid edifice would saddle their undertaking with a heavy debt, and perhaps cripple resources needed for carrying on their actual work; but they have obtained from Mr. Grüning, the architect, a plain building which will provide for their needs for some time to come, and may be hereafter increased in accommodation by additions that will improve, rather than detract from, its completeness. A great establishment, with a hundred beds, laundries, drying-houses, and hot and cold sea-baths on the premises, would cost £13,000; and as the actually available funds in hand for building purposes were not more than £5,000, with another probable £1,000 added by special donations expected during the year, the committee, however reluctantly, folded up the original plan, and estimated the cost of a plain unpretentious building, calculated at first to receive thirty-three male and thirty-three female patients, but capable of additions which will raise its usefulness and completeness to the higher demand, whenever there are funds sufficient to pay for them. The expenditure for the new hospital was about £7000, and, should the anticipated donations be increased fourfold, there will be no difficulty in crowning the work, by such provisions as will include the full number of a hundred faint and failing men and women within the retreat where they find rest and healing.

WITH THE LITTLE ONES

Yes, and amidst the mystery of suffering and pain, – the beginning of that discipline which commences very early, and continues, for many of us, during a whole lifetime, at such intervals as may be necessary for the consummation which we can only faintly discern when we begin to see that which is invisible to the eyes of flesh and of human understanding, and is revealed only to the higher reason – the essential perception which is called faith.

I want you to come with me to that eastern district of the great city which has for so long a time been associated with accounts of distress, of precarious earnings, homes without food or fire, scanty clothing, dilapidated houses, dire poverty and the diseases that come of cold and starvation. The place that I shall take you to is quite close to the Stepney Station of the North London Railway. The district is known as Ratcliff; the streets down which we shall pass are strangely destitute of any but small shops, where a front "parlour" window contains small stocks of chandlery or of general cheap odds and ends. The doorways of the houses are mostly open, and are occupied by women and children, of so poor and neglected an appearance, that we need no longer wonder at the constant demands made upon the institution which we are about to visit. Just here the neighbourhood seems to have come to a dreary termination at the brink of the river, and to be only kept from slipping into the dark current by two or three big sheds and wharves, belonging to mast, rope, and block-makers, or others connected with that shipping interest the yards of which are, many of them, deserted, no longer resounding to the noise of hammers. The black spars and yards of vessels alongside seem almost to project into the roadway as we turn the corner and stand in front of a building, scarcely to be distinguished from its neighbours, except for the plain inscription on its front, "East London Hospital for Children and Dispensary for Women," and for a rather more recent appearance of having had the woodwork painted. But for this there would be little more to attract attention than might be seen in any of the sail-makers' dwellings, stores, and lofts in the district; and, in fact, the place itself is – or rather was – a sail-maker's warehouse, with trap-doors in the rough and foot-worn floors, steep and narrow stairs, bulks and baulks of timber here and there in the heavy ceilings and awkward corners, not easily turned to account in any other business. Some of these inconveniences have been remedied, and the trap-doors as well as the awkwardest of the corners and the bulks have been either removed or adapted to present purposes, for the business is to provide a home and careful nursing for sick children, and the long rooms of the upper storeys are turned into wards, wherein stand rows of Lilliputian iron bedsteads, or tiny cribs, where forty boys and girls, some of them not only babes but sucklings, form the present contingent of the hundred and sixty little ones who have been treated during the year. Not a very desirable-looking residence you will say, but there are a good many inmates after all; and the scrupulous cleanliness of the place, as seen from the very passage, is an earnest of that plan of making the best of things which has always been characteristic of this hospital at Ratcliff Cross. Some eight or nine grownup folks, and from thirty to forty children, make a bright, cheerful home (apart from the suffering and death which are inseparable from such a place) in that old sail-maker's warehouse, if brightness and cheerfulness are the accompaniments of good and loving work, as I thoroughly believe they are.

It was during the terrible visitation of cholera, nearly twelve years ago, that this work of mercy was initiated, and the manner of its foundation has about it something so pathetic that it is fitting the story should be known, especially as the earnest, hopeful effort with which the enterprise began seems to have characterised it to the present day. Among the medical men who went about in the neighbourhood of Poplar and Ratcliff during the epidemic, was Mr. Heckford, a young surgeon, who, having recently come from India, was attached to the London Hospital, and who took a constant and active part in the professional duties he had undertaken. In that arduous work, he, as well as others, received valuable and indeed untiring aid from the ready skill and thoughtful care of a few ladies, who, having qualified themselves as nurses, devoted themselves to the labour of love amongst the poor. To one of this charitable sisterhood, who had been his frequent helper in the time of difficulty and danger, the young surgeon became attracted by the force of a sympathy that continued after the plague was stayed in the district to which they had given so much care, and when they had time to think of themselves and of each other. They went away together a quietly married couple; both having one special aim and object in relation to the beneficent career upon which they had entered in company. Knowing from hardly-earned experience the dire need of the district, they at once began to consider what they could do to alleviate the sufferings of the women and children, so many of whom were sick and languishing, in hunger and pain, amidst conditions which forbade their recovery. If only they could make a beginning, and do something towards arresting the ravages of those diseases that wait on famine and lurk in foul and fœtid alleys; – if they could establish a dispensary where women – mothers too poor to pay a doctor – could have medicine and careful encouragement; if they could find a place where, beginning with a small family of say half a dozen, they might take a tiny group of infants to their home, and so set up a centre of beneficent action, a protest against the neglect, the indifference, and the preventable misery for which that whole neighbourhood had so long had an evil distinction.

The question was, how to make a beginning: but the young doctor and his wife had been so accustomed to the work of taking help to the very doors of those who needed it, that all they wanted was to find a place in the midst of that down-east district where they could themselves live and work. Out of their own means they bought the only available premises for their purpose – a rough, dilapidated, but substantial, and above all, a ventilable sail-loft with its adjacent house and store-rooms, and there they quietly established themselves as residents, with ten little beds, holding ten poor little patients supported by themselves, in the hope that voluntary aid from some of the benevolent persons who knew what was the sore need of the neighbourhood would enable them in time to add twenty or thirty more, when the big upper storeys should be cleansed and mended and made into wards. That hope was not long in being realised, and on the 28th of January, 1868, after a determined effort to maintain the institution and to devote themselves to its service, a regular committee was formed and commenced its undertakings, the founders still remaining and working with unselfish zeal. From twenty to thirty little ones were received from out that teeming district, where a large hospital with ten times the number of beds would not be adequate to the needs of the infant population, the mothers of which have to work to earn the scanty wages which in many cases alone keep them from absolute starvation. The struggle to maintain the wards in the old sail-lofts was all the harder, from the knowledge that in at least half the number of cases where admission was necessarily refused, from want of space and want of funds, the little applicants were sent away to die, or to become helpless invalids or confirmed cripples, not less from the effects of destitution – the want of food and clothing – than from the nature of the diseases from which they were suffering.

The young doctor and his wife dwelt there, and with cultivated tastes and accomplishments submitted to all the inconveniences of a small room or two, from which they were almost ousted by the increasing need for space. With a bright and cheerful alacrity they adapted those very tastes and accomplishments to supplement professional skill and tender assiduous care: the lady – herself in such delicate health that her husband feared for her life, and friends anxiously advised her to seek rest and change – used books and music to cheer the noble work, and always had a picture on her easel, with which to hide the awkward bulges and projections, or to decorate the bare walls and brighten them with light and colour.

It was at Christmas-tide seven years ago that I first visited the hospital, and there were then very pleasant evidences of the season to be discovered in all kinds of festive ornament in the long wards, and especially in the smaller rooms, where this loving woman had attracted other loving women around her, as nurses to the suffering little ones; and was there and then engaged in the superintendence of a glorious Christmas-tree. But the time came when the hoped-for support having arrived, Mr. and Mrs. Heckford felt that they could leave the family of forty children to the care of those who had taken up the work with heartfelt sympathy. They had laboured worthily and well, but, alas! – the reward came late – late at least for him, who had been anxious to take his wife away to some warmer climate, in an endeavour to restore the strength that had been spent in the long effort to rear a permanent refuge for sick children in that dense neighbourhood. It was he who stood nearest to shadow-land, – he who was soonest to enter into the light and the rest that lay beyond. Mr. Heckford died, I believe, at Margate, after a short period of leisure and travel, which his wife shared with him. His picture, presented by her to the charity which they both founded, is to be seen in the boys' ward. Another portrait of him – a portrait in words written by the late Mr. Charles Dickens, who visited and pathetically described the children and their hospital in December, 1868, conveys the real likeness of the man.

"An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called the Children's Doctor. As I parted from my Children's Doctor now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose-buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the exact realisation of the Paris artist's ideal as it was presented on the stage. But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and wife, in the Children's Hospital in the East of London."

What the hospital was then, it has remained – but with such improvements as increased funds and a more complete organisation have effected. It is still the ark of refuge for those little ones who, smitten with sudden disease, or slowly fading before the baleful breath of famine or of fever, or ebbing slowly away from life by the fatal influences that sap the constitutions of the young in such neighbourhoods, are taken in that they may be brought back to life, or at worst may be lovingly tended, that the last messenger may be made to bear a smile.

But the hope for the future of this most admirable institution has grown to fill a larger space. It is indeed essential to any really permanent effort in such a district that it should be increased, and the founders looked forward with earnest anticipations of the time when, gathering help from without, they could enter upon a larger building, which will soon be completed, and will be more adequate to the needs of such a teeming population. The area embracing Poplar, Mile End, Whitechapel, St. George's, Limehouse, Ratcliff, Shadwell, and Wapping numbers some 400,000 inhabitants, and strangely enough – as it will seem to those who have not yet learnt the true characteristics of the really deserving poor – many of the distressed people about that quarter will conceal their poverty, and strive as long as they are able – so that when at last they go to ask for aid the case may be almost hopeless, and the delay in obtaining admission may be fatal. There are already so many more applicants than can be received that it may be imagined what must be the vast amount of alleviable suffering awaiting the opportunity of wider means and a larger building. It would be easy to shock the reader by detailing many of the more distressing diseases from which the poor little patients suffer, but on visiting the wards you are less shocked than saddened, while the evident rest and care which are helping to restore and to sooth the sufferers ease you of the greater pain by the hope that they inspire.

It is Sunday noon as we stand here in the dull street where, but for the sudden opening of a frowsy tavern and the appearance of two or three thirsty but civil customers, who are not only ready but eager to show you the way to the "Childun's 'orsepital," there would be little to distinguish it from a thoroughfare of tenantless houses. Ratcliff is at its dinner at present, but we shall as we go back see the male residents leaning against the doorposts smoking, and the women and children sitting at the doors as at a private box at the theatre, discussing the sordid events of the streets and the small chronicles of their poor daily lives.

But we must leave the cleanly-scrubbed waiting-room and its adjoining large cupboard which does duty as dispenser's room. It is dinnertime here too, or rather it has been, and there are evidences of some very jolly feasting, considering that, after all, the banqueters are mostly in bed and on sick diet, which in many cases means milk, meat, eggs, and as much nourishment as they can safely take. Indeed, food is medicine to those who are turning the corner towards convalescence – food and air – of which latter commodity there is a very excellent supply considering the kind of neighbourhood we are in. Here and there we see a little wan, pinched, wasted face lying on the pillow; a listless, transparent hand upon the counterpane – which are sad tokens that the tiny sufferers are nearing the eternal fold beyond the shadowy threshold where all is dark to us, who note how every breath bespeaks a feebler hold on the world of which they have learnt so little in their tiny lives. There are others who are sitting up with picture-books, or waiting to have their abscesses dressed, and arms bandaged, or eyes laved with cooling lotion. Hip-disease and diseases of the joints are evidence of the causes that bring so many of the little patients here, and there are severe cases of consumption and of affections of the lungs and of the glands; but as the little fellow wakes up from a short nap, or catches the eye of the "lady nurse" – a lively and thoroughly practical Irishwoman, who evidently knows how to manage, and has come here, after special training, for the love of doing good – they show a beaming recognition which is very pleasant to witness. With all the nurses it is the same.

They are young women who, receiving small pay, have come to devote themselves to the work for Christ's sake and the Gospel's – that is to say, for the love of humanity and of the good tidings of great joy that announce the love of Him who gave Himself for us.

In the girls' ward there is the same freshness and cleanliness of the place and all its belongings, the same wonderful patience and courageous endurance on the part of the baby inmates, which has been my wonder ever since we went in. Here is a mite of a girl sitting up in bed, holding a moist pad to her eye, her poor little head being all bandaged. She never utters a sound, but the little round face is set with a determined endurance. "What is she sitting up for?" She is "waiting to see muvver." Another little creature, who is suffering from abscesses in the neck, submits to have the painful place poulticed only on the condition that she shall decide, by keeping her hand upon the warm linseed-meal, when it is cool enough to put on. These are scarcely pleasant details, and there are sights here which are very, very sad, and make us shrink – but I honestly declare that they are redeemed from being repulsive because of the evidence of love that is to be witnessed, – the awakening of the tender sympathies and sweet responses of the childlike heart. But for its being Sunday – which involves another reason to be mentioned presently – the beds would be strewed with toys and picture-books, while a rocking-horse, which is a part of the hospital property, and a fit kind of steed to draw the "hospital-carriage," which is represented by a perambulator – would probably be saddled and taken out of the stable on the landing. On the topmost storey we come to the real infants, the little babies, one of whom is even now in the midst of his dinner, which he takes from a feeding-bottle, by the aid of an india-rubber tube conveniently traversing his pillow.