A short time at this hospital, and a few months as superintendent at the Great Northern Hospital, ended her work in London.  The work at the latter tried her much both in body and mind, for not only did the whole responsibility of it rest upon her shoulders, but owing to the inexperience of her assistants, most of the nursing devolved on her as well.  One patient who was critically ill she was obliged for six weeks to nurse entirely both by night and day.  Nervous debility was the natural consequence of such overwork, and a deafness from which she had suffered at Kaiserswerth so much increased that the doctor ordered her to rest.  That was not immediately possible, as there was no one to take her place, and when at last a successor had been found, and she was able to return home, she was so weary both in body and mind that she failed to find her usual delight in the loveliness of Fahan.  A few weeks’ stay, however, in the bracing air near the Giant’s Causeway restored her to her wonted health.

The winter was passed at her home, resting quietly in preparation for the work in Liverpool, of which the offer has been already mentioned.  In the spring of 1865 she left for ever the old familiar spot with its beautiful hills and glens, and its cottages, to many of whose inmates she had been the means of bringing comfort and peace; Liverpool, with its needy poor and its many difficult problems, claiming her for the last three years of her life.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONGST THE PAUPERS.

In the year 1698, William III. stated in a speech that:—­“Workhouses, under a prudent and good management, will answer all the ends of charity to the poor, in regard to their souls and bodies; they may be made, properly speaking, nurseries for religion, virtue, and industry.”  But could the good king who anticipated so many advantages from workhouses have only seen our poor law institutions a hundred and fifty or sixty years later, he would have been pained to learn how far they had fallen short of his sanguine expectations.  The sick and helpless were entrusted to the care of women who, being paupers themselves, and of a low class, and being for the most part in the workhouse through loss of character, were found to be almost incapable of training.  Rough they were, and in many cases brutal as well, while their roughness and brutality were intensified by the free use of intoxicants.  Their language was terrible, and not only did they quarrel constantly amongst themselves, but fights were of frequent occurrence.

To endure such treatment and to witness such scenes was the daily lot of a sick pauper, who knew also that when dead he would have little better than the burial of a dog, since it was the common custom in many workhouses to bury corpses naked, with no covering but a few shavings thrown over the body.  Little wonder was it that the poor, when overtaken by age or disease, shrank from the thought of entering a place which to them seemed worse than a prison, choosing rather to die without attention than to be treated in such a barbarous manner.