By noon the following day Hope no longer thought the job was a new beginning, but represented several steps backwards.
When she reported for work at six, four people had died during the night, one of them a six-year-old boy. She watched in abject horror as two male orderlies stripped the corpses of any clothes they were wearing, and then, manhandling their naked bodies as though they were sides of meat, took them down the corridor into a yard and flung them into an open cart. She was told they were being taken to the Pit.
No one came to give her any instructions. The two old biddies she’d seen the night before left as she arrived, to be replaced by another two women who were equally old and dirty and introduced themselves as Sal and Moll. Sal was very small, with no teeth, which made her appear as if her face was caving in. Moll was a much bigger woman with a bulbous red nose, and the grey hair which showed beneath her cap was so matted it looked like skeins of darning wool.
They were friendly enough, but seemed completely oblivious to the needs of the sick on the ward. When Hope asked if they should clean the area where the dead had been lying they cackled with laughter.
‘We don’t bother with none of that,’ Moll replied. ‘The cart’ll be back with more within the hour. Ain’t no point in cleaning a place someone else will shit on. You come in the back wif us and ’ave a cuppa tea.’
Hope wanted a cup of tea badly, and the room they called ‘the back’ was a great deal more inviting than the ward, with a stove, sink, table and chairs and a window that opened. But she couldn’t possibly sit down and drink tea when she knew that more sick people would be arriving soon.
In a quick reconnoitre of the yard at the end of the corridor where the carter came in, she found there was clean strawin a lean-to shed. There was also a brazier that held the clothes of those who had been taken away earlier, which were obviously going to be burned. Taking a large empty box back in with her, she swept up all the foul straw, took it out and dumped it, then scrubbed the cleared area vigorously.
Once she’d put clean straw down she went into the back room. Despite the hot weather, Sal and Moll were huddled close to the stove, and the smell coming from them was almost as bad as the stink in the ward.
In her time in Lewins Mead she’d met many women like them, lazy, dirty and unscrupulous and lacking any morality. Such women would steal the pennies from a dead man’s eyes.
But Hope knew that if she was to challenge them in any way, they would make trouble for her, so she hoped to appeal to their better natures.
‘I’ve cleaned up and put fresh strawdown,’ she said as she washed her hands. ‘Do we give the patients tea now?’
‘Tea!’ Sal exclaimed. ‘They only gets water, and they can wait fer that till we’s ready.’
Hope had seen the wooden water pail in the ward, and was appalled that the tin mug hanging on the side of it appeared to be used by everyone.
‘Come on now, ducks, ’ave a cuppa tea,’ Doll said. ‘I knows you wants to look good on yer first day, but them in there ain’t going now here but the Pit. No sense in wearying yerself out fer nothin’.’
Hope bit back a sharp remark, washed a cup out carefully, then poured herself some tea from the pot they’d made. ‘I thought that maybe we could move some of the patients on to the clean straw and then wash the floor where they’ve been,’ she said tentatively.
‘Yer what?’ Doll retorted. ‘We don’t touch ’em, well, ’cept for givin’ ’em a drink and tryin’ to get ’em to take some gruel when they brings it.’
That, Hope discovered, was the entire extent of nursing in the cholera ward. Even Sister Martha when she appeared later only hovered in the doorway clutching her crucifix and could offer no practical advice or instructions. It seemed that no patient was ever washed, there were no comforting hot poultices, no extra blankets put over those shivering with fever, and absolutely no one rubbed limbs when they went into cramps.
While Hope could see by the blue colour of the patients and the torpor they’d fallen into that they were probably too far advanced with the disease to save, nonetheless she felt she had at least to try to make them more comfortable and the ward less foul. So one by one she rolled or pulled the patients on to clean straw, washed their faces and hands, then scrubbed the place they had been before.
‘Yer mad,’ Doll said as she stood lolling against the doorpost looking on in complete disbelief that Hope was scrubbing the floor. ‘You’ll catch it an’ all, pokin’ around ’em like that.’
As expected, the men arrived back with the cart, containing three new female patients. All three were already in the final stages, with blue-tinged faces and struggling to draw breath. Hope tried to get them to drink, but they seemed unable to swallow and the water just dribbled out of their lips. She sawa rat looking balefully at her as she put blankets over them, and thought it was just as well the women were unaware of where they were.
Hope was kneeling beside a patient, vigorously rubbing his legs because he had severe cramps, when Dr Meadows arrived. She didn’t hear the ward door open as the big, redheaded man was tossing his head from side to side alarmingly while roaring with pain.
The doctor came straight to her to take over the friction. ‘Take the laudanum from my bag and put a few drops in hot water,’ he ordered her.
Hope did as he asked, rushing back to feed the man with it. He clenched his teeth against the cup at first, but Hope stroked his face and implored him to drink it.
‘It will make the pain go,’ she told him. ‘Just drink it for me.’
He seemed to hear her and did as she asked, then within a few minutes he was still.
‘Thank you,’ he croaked. ‘Will you tell my wife to kiss the babbies for me and say goodbye for me?’
‘You’ll be able to kiss them yourself soon,’ she lied. ‘Go to sleep now.’
Dr Meadows asked her to come out in the backyard with him when he’d made his rounds of the other patients.
After the darkness of the ward, the sun was so bright she was blinded. But it felt good to breathe fresh air again.
‘I fully expected to find you’d already turned tail and run,’ the doctor admitted wryly.
‘I have been tempted,’ she said and launched into a despondent description of how her first morning had been. ‘I can’t believe that no one does anything for the sick!’
Dr Meadows sighed in sympathy. ‘I know exactly how you must feel, Hope. I do what I can when I call, but it isn’t anywhere near enough. The truth of the matter is that the sick are just brought in here to die; we aren’t tackling the disease at all.
‘But there is no medicine which will save their lives. I can’t even claim that clean beds, bathing them or swaddling the sick in more blankets will make any difference to the outcome. In past epidemics it has been evident that it is in the hands of God if they recover, not through nursing.’
‘But it’s inhuman not to make their last hours more comfortable and give them some dignity,’ Hope said heatedly. She was hot and sweaty, hungry too now that the bowl of porridge she’d been given for breakfast before six this morning was a distant memory. ‘Besides, those women are paid to do a job, and if they won’t do it they should be told to go.’
Dr Meadows ran his fingers through his hair in a weary gesture. ‘Those two live here, in the workhouse part of the hospital. Just as the two last night do,’ he said with a tinge of reproach. ‘They didn’t choose to nurse the sick, they were ordered to do it, and their only reward is an allowance of beer or gin. Can you blame them for being less than enthusiastic?’
Hope felt chastened, for she had been promised four shillings a week and her board and lodging. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘What we need is some way of recruiting the right kind of women into nursing, and then training them properly,’ he said dejectedly. ‘At present we have either those from holy orders, or paupers, nothing in between. But with low wages, appalling conditions and the risk of infection, what is there to attract good women? Look at you! If you hadn’t been press-ganged into it, would you be here?’
‘You didn’t press-gang me,’ Hope said. ‘You’ve been very kind to me, sir, especially making out I was your cousin! I think that’s why I got a room on my own. And Alice was really kind too. Will you thank her for the things she sent me? It meant a great deal to me.’
‘Alice liked you very much, her little gifts were her way of telling you that,’ he said earnestly. ‘And I will pass on your message. But my name is Bennett. Cousins can’t be formal.’
Hope blushed, for he had a way of looking at her that made her feel very odd.
‘Have you had your dinner yet?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I thought Sister Martha would come and tell me about that.’
‘She’s been assisting in a leg amputation,’ Bennett said.
‘You’ve been taking someone’s leg off?’ Hope winced.
‘Not I, the surgeon, but I administered the chloroform. The poor man should make a full recovery, but I don’t know how he’ll feed his family. He won’t be able to work with only one leg.’
Bennett took her down to the room just off the kitchen where she’d had breakfast earlier in the day. There were six people eating, two rough-looking men who appeared to be orderlies, a very old nun whom Bennett introduced as Sister Clare, and three nurses who looked only marginally cleaner and younger than Sal and Doll, and stared at Hope with hard eyes.
She was given a large bowl of greasy-looking greeny-grey soup and a lump of bread. Bennett declined anything himself but sat with her while she ate it.
‘What is it like?’ he asked.
‘Not quite as bad as it looks,’ she grinned.
Bennett smiled. ‘Are you always so stoical?’
‘I am about food, I know what it’s like to be starving,’ she shrugged.
‘You’ve seen the very worst of St Peter’s today,’ Bennett said earnestly. ‘But the cholera ward is not representative of the whole hospital. Dr Peebles, the surgeon, is excellent; they have a good record for midwifery here too. But the building is old, and isn’t really suitable for a hospital.’
‘Why are they still using it then?’ she asked. ‘Surely it is bad to bring people with infectious diseases to a workhouse where there are orphans, old people and the insane?’
‘When the new General Hospital was built it was the intention that all the sick would go there,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But it just isn’t large enough, not when an epidemic like this strikes. And St Peter’s is not a workhouse exactly; it’s more what you might call a refuge.’
‘I thought a refuge meant a place of safety?’ Hope said with a touch of sarcasm.
Bennett half-smiled. ‘You’d better not start me on that subject,’ he said. ‘It is something I tend to rant about.’
‘Tell me,’ she insisted.
‘Well, in the old days, until just before you were born, most of our unfortunates, the poor and old, simple or sick, got what they called outside relief. They stayed in their own homes and got money from the parish to support them. St Peter’s and places like it were for those who had no home or were too sick or old to look after themselves. In the main they were decent places, and St Peter’s was one of the best.
‘But the government wanted to get the ratepayers on their side by saving money, so they brought in a new Poor Law. Outside relief was stopped because they believed it encouraged people to be idle and feckless, and instead they built hundreds of workhouses all over the country, forbidding, prison-like places with no comforts whatsoever, which would deter all but the most desperate.’
Hope nodded. ‘My parents were always afraid of ending up in one,’ she said.
‘It is people just like your parents who suffer the most from the new Poor Law,’ he said with a deep sigh. ‘Imagine your father was laid off work for a few weeks, Hope, or became sick. Under the old law he could fall back on parish relief to tide him over to feed his family until he got well, or went back to work. Old people could stay in their villages, helped in their infirmity by neighbours and family. But suddenly all that was wiped out; not a penny would be handed over.
‘Once these unfortunates have used up their savings, sold their belongings and are starving, they are forced to leave their home and go to the workhouse.’
He stopped his impassioned outburst suddenly and grinned sheepishly. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean to go into all the iniquities of that! What I really meant to point out was that the trustees of St Peter’s have tried to keep it as it always was; a home for those who have now here else. It continues to shelter the aged, the feeble-minded, orphans, mothers who cannot have their babies at home, and the sick. It doesn’t have the barbaric regime of the Union work-houses; no one here has ever picked oakum, or broken stones for building work. But like most charities, it is flawed. In emergencies the doors are opened too wide, and right now we have far too many sick. Without the facilities or the staff to nurse them.’
Hope noticed that he was blushing, clearly embarrassed that he had tried to defend St Peter’s.
‘You are something of a rarity,’ Hope said impishly. ‘I didn’t think the gentry cared about anything or anybody but themselves.’
He looked startled. ‘Do you see me as “gentry”?’
‘Well, you are,’ she said.
‘No, I’m not. As I told you yesterday, but for my uncle’s support when my father died, I would probably have gone into service too. Anyway, to get back to St Peter’s and the crisis we are in here, if it wasn’t for the Sisters of Mercy, who fortunately think God has personally instructed them to stay here, I don’t know what we should do.’
Hope smiled. ‘That sounds as if you don’t believe in God.’
‘I’ll believe in Him if He chooses to end this epidemic,’ he chuckled. ‘Or taps me on the shoulder and shows me how it starts. I have had many an argument with Mary Carpenter about faith. She tells me I should be ashamed for having none. But what about you, Hope? Are you a believer, or a doubter like me?’
‘It depends,’ she smiled. ‘When I was selling kindling I’d offer up a little prayer each time I approached a front door. I believed if they bought some wood, I doubted if they didn’t. Betsy used to say that gin worked better than religion. One glass and your troubles fade away.’