universally acknowledged to be the fittest to undertake so arduous a work. We still hope to see this desire accomplished, and if so, a blessing will indeed have arisen out of the sorrows and calamities of war, and one to which all classes of our countrymen and countrywomen will have contributed, by the testimonial offered to Miss Nightingale. But till such an opportunity is offered, what fitter place for learning could be found than our workhouses, which are institutions for all classes and characters amongst the poor, if learners could be admitted into them under the sanction of some intelligent and superior governing power, who would welcome assistance and co-operation, and not reject it with jealousy and fear? It is encouraging to see what a few years have done for the advocates of this cause. Those who, before Miss Nightingale's mission to the Crimea, would have loudly denounced such proceedings as preposterous and impossible, now stand up publicly to uphold them. Women's work is boldly claimed for hospitals, and in many cases earnestly sought for. Not only is a superior class of women demanded for the lower offices in them (for the Mrs. Gamps are now beginning to be thought undesirable attendants upon the sick and dying), but women of education and refinement are desired, as a religious and humanizing and refining element, amidst scenes of temptation, sorrow, and suffering. Those who have the power of looking behind the scenes, and know the truth, can tell something of the need that exists for the introduction of such a superintending power as this. Hitherto the chief supervision of our hospitals has been exercised by the matron and medical men, who can only visit the wards occasionally, and at long intervals. At other times the nurses reign supreme, and how unfit they are, generally speaking, for a rule involving matters of life and death, is now beginning to be felt, and the true remedy applied. The patients, feeling the kindness and charity which admit them into these asylums, think it ungrateful to make complaints to the medical men, whatever they may hear and see, and so, many evils exist which never reach the ears of the officials. During their presence in the wards of course all is as it should be.
It is very desirable that England should possess a training school of her own for those who wish to learn and carry out any of the various works of charity which are calling for the assistance of women.[1] Each nation must organize its own plans, and
- ↑ Under the present system, matrons undertake the important posts of superintending institutions containing several hundred inmates, without any previous experience of management, or even of intercourse with the poor generally. We shall never have better results till there are training institutions (which might be the workhouses), where both men and women may prepare themselves for their work, as is universally the case abroad. It seems to us that the true method of training for work is now being tried in the North-West London Preventive and Reformatory Institution, where the future masters of similar establishments are
