metropolitan workhouses, of which there are between forty and fifty in London and the immediate neighbourhood. Of the 80,000 whom we said die annually of three mortal diseases (dropsy, cancer, and consumption), it may be supposed that a large proportion end their days in these public institutions supported by the poor-law, because those who are found to be incurable of any disease are turned out of hospitals, which are intended only to receive cases of temporary and curable illness. We know but of one entire hospital[1] for the reception of cases who must die after years of suffering, and but of one London hospital[2] that reserves a ward for such sufferers, who, at the bitterest moment of their lives, when hope is gone and years perhaps of suffering are before them, are told that medical help can do no more for them.
If the hospital nurse was till lately untrained and untrustworthy, what must the workhouse nurse be, in the still lower depth of social life from which she is taken? It is a fact that those who have once been employed in hospitals come, as a last resource, to the workhouse, and are there set in office over wards of sick and dying
