These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and
received no out-of-door relief.
In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent
woman with five children, – the last a baby, and she herself a
patient of the parish doctor, – to whom, her husband being in the
hospital, the Union allowed for the support of herself and family,
four shillings a week and five loaves. I suppose when Thisman,
M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their
heads together in course of time, and come to an equalization of
rating, she may go down to the dance of death to the tune of
sixpence more.
I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not
bear the contemplation of the children. Such heart as I had
summoned to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me
when I looked at the children. I saw how young they were, how
hungry, how serious and still. I thought of them, sick and dying
in those lairs. I think of them dead without anguish; but to think
of them so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me.
Down by the river’s bank in Ratcliff, I was turning upward by a
side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested
on the inscription across the road, ‘East London Children’s
Hospital.’ I could scarcely have seen an inscription better suited
to my frame of mind; and I went across and went straight in.
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
I found the children’s hospital established in an old sail-loft or
storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means.
There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted
up and down; heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in
the well-trodden planking: inconvenient bulks and beams and
awkward staircases perplexed my passage through the wards. But I
found it airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I
saw but little beauty; for starvation in the second or third
generation takes a pinched look: but I saw the sufferings both of
infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little
patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a
delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to pity;
and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves
lovingly around her wedding-ring.
One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael’s angels. The
tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering
with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive,
though not impatient or complaining, little sound. The smooth
curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its
condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were
most lovely. It happened as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that
these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expression of
wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very little
children. They remained fixed on mine, and never turned from me
while I stood there. When the utterance of that plaintive sound
shook the little form, the gaze still remained unchanged. I felt
as though the child implored me to tell the story of the little
hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could
address. Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked
clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I would
do so.
A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and
fitted up this building for its present noble use, and have quietly
settled themselves in it as its medical officers and directors.
Both have had considerable practical experience of medicine and
surgery; he as house-surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a
very earnest student, tested by severe examination, and also as a
nurse of the sick poor during the prevalence of cholera.
With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and
accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response in
any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance