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a report on the probable operation of the proposed system from Mr. Carr, the Governor of the Workhouse. That report ran as follows:—
Extract from the Journal of the Governor of the Workhouse.
Liverpool, Thursday, April 14, 1864.In compliance with the instructions of the Workhouse Committee, I have carefully considered the proposal made to the Committee by a Liverpool gentleman, on the subject of nursing the sick in the Workhouse Hospital, and beg in reference thereto to report—
That, practically, the proposal amounts to this—that there shall not be any pauper nurses in the hospital, but that there shall be appointed in lieu a staff of duly qualified paid nurses and servants, with a head superintendent, under whom the whole of the nursing of the sick shall be conducted on the best known principles.
This proposal rests its claim to favourable consideration on the presumption that the present system of nursing the sick in the Workhouse Hospital is defective. The Committee are aware what that system is. It may thus be briefly stated. Certain wards of the workhouse are set apart as hospital wards. They do not form an hospital worked as a whole, but are divided into five portions, each forming a distinct set of wards, in close proximity to the wards of the healthy paupers, and in five different parts of the workhouse. These five sets of wards I shall call the Workhouse Hospital. The hospital is divided into eleven sections. At the head of each section there is an intelligent paid superintendent nurse, and under each such superintendent nurse there is placed a staff of pauper nurses, with the aid of whom she is required to work her division, according to certain rules and regulations made and provided for that purpose. A copy of these rules is appended hereto; from which it will be seen that the burden of the responsibility of carrying out the orders of the medical officers, devolves upon the head nurses or superintendents of
