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Home (which it is hoped will be the Central Home of many other districts) under the charge and training of Miss Florence Lees, as Superintendent-General, with five hospital-trained nurses and three nurse candidates, and to carry on the previously existing work of the East London Nursing Society with six nurses.

The Central Home was opened at 23, Bloomsbury Square in December last, the nursing work having been begun in the neighbourhood, from a temporary abode, in July. The Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas's Hospital is at present giving the year's hospital training to six, to be increased to twelve, admitted candidates.

A group of districts is now about to be nursed where the residents have engaged to raise £300 a year towards the expenses of a district home, with a skilled superintendent for supervising the nursing of four or more trained nurses, and one or two servants; for district nurses have quite other things to do than to cook for and wait upon themselves. They are the servants, and very hard-worked servants, of the poor sick.

We ask the public not to add one more charity or relief agency to the many there are already, but to support a charity—truly 'metropolitan' in its scope, and truly 'national' if carried out—which never has been before.^[1]

April 1876.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

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Experience hitherto shows that, if an institution is begun to 'provide skilled nurses for rich and poor,' especially if to be self supporting,' it ends by 'providing skilled nurses' for 'the rich' alone. For 'the rich' must come first, if the institution is to be 'self-supporting': or in other words, if the nurse is to 'support' the institution. And if the rich come first, they will be first and last.
The present Association has therefore begun by providing trained nurses for the poor alone, always in the view of the Provident Dispensary System at last: also, of nursing pressing, needy, middle class cases, as already has been done.
These, and indeed poorer cases, have made presents to the Association. the Nurses take none.
But the object of the Association is: to give first-rate nursing to the poor sick at home (which they never have had). And this costs money.

[1] 
Experience hitherto shows that, if an institution is begun to 'provide skilled nurses for rich and poor,' especially if to be self supporting,' it ends by 'providing skilled nurses' for 'the rich' alone. For 'the rich' must come first, if the institution is to be 'self-supporting': or in other words, if the nurse is to 'support' the institution. And if the rich come first, they will be first and last.
The present Association has therefore begun by providing trained nurses for the poor alone, always in the view of the Provident Dispensary System at last: also, of nursing pressing, needy, middle class cases, as already has been done.
These, and indeed poorer cases, have made presents to the Association. the Nurses take none.
But the object of the Association is: to give first-rate nursing to the poor sick at home (which they never have had). And this costs money.

[1]