Evatt, G. J. H. (George Joseph Hamilton), 1843-1921; Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910
A word must here be said of Mr. William Rathbone’s work in Liverpool.
After the death of his first wife, realizing the comfort and help that
had been given during her last illness by a trained nurse, he determined
to do what he could to bring aid of the same kind into the homes of the
poor, where the need was often so much more terrible. This brought him
into touch with Miss Nightingale, who advised him to start a school of
nursing in connection with the Liverpool Hospital. These two friends—for
they soon became trusted and valued friends, each to each—were both
people of prompt and efficient action, and one step led to another,
until Liverpool had not only an important school of nurses for the sick
poor, but also led the way throughout the country in the reform of the
hitherto scandalous nursing in workhouse infirmaries. Mr. Rathbone set
his mind on securing the services of Miss Agnes Elizabeth Jones to help
him in his work, a woman of character as saintly as his own, and the
difference in their religious outlook only made more beautiful their
mutual relations in this great work.
Miss Agnes Jones, who has already been mentioned more than once in these
pages, left an undying record on England’s roll of honour. It was of her
that in 1868 Miss Nightingale wrote[17]:—
“A woman attractive and rich, and young and witty; yet a veiled
and silent woman, distinguished by no other genius but the
divine genius—working hard to train herself in order to train
others to walk in the footsteps of Him who went about doing
good.... She died, as she had lived, at her post in one of
the largest workhouse infirmaries in this kingdom—the first
in which trained nursing has been introduced.... When her
whole life and image rise before me, so far from thinking the
story of Una and her lion a myth, I say here is Una in real
flesh and blood—Una and her paupers far more untamable than
lions. In less than three years she had reduced one of the
most disorderly hospital populations in the world to something
like Christian discipline, and had converted a vestry to the
conviction of the economy as well as humanity of nursing pauper
sick by trained nurses.”
And it was in introducing a book about the Liverpool Home and School for
Nurses that she wrote:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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