[1]Liverpool is a seaport, and a receptacle where the poverty and vice of
Great Britain and Ireland seem to accumulate; and it is probably on this
account that the able-bodied female paupers are peculiarly vicious and
worthless.
[2]Among the replies of the London medical officers, one which seemed
especially to impress the Sub-Committee was given by the senior honorary
medical officer of St. Thomas’s. Mr. Hagger asked him, “If you had to cure
the sick by contract at so much a head, and had to choose between unpaid
pauper nurses allotted to you gratis, or paying yourself for skilled nurses,
which would you choose?” “To pay for skilled nurses, certainly,” was the
unhesitating answer.
[3]In the opinion of the medical men of the Liverpool Workhouse Hospital,
647 of its present number of patients would be admissible to an ordinary
hospital, and
| Men—Medical | 40 |
| ” Surgical | 80 |
| Women—Medical | 40 |
| ” Surgical | 60 |
| | 220 | would not be admissible. |
[4]In a training school for superior nurses, it will
never be desirable to
employ pauper under-nurses, as they interfere with the efficiency of the
probationers, who are being trained as superior nurses. The latter are apt to
delegate to the paupers much of the hard but most instructive part of their
work. In ordinary workhouse hospitals, when there are no probationers,
a certain number of pauper assistants may perhaps be useful in aiding
thoroughly trained nurses.