Joseph Rogers, M.D.: Reminiscences of a Workhouse Medical OfficerRogers, Joseph
History
Joseph Rogers, M.D.: Reminiscences of a Workhouse Medical Officer
Rogers, Joseph
Charities, Medical -- Great Britain; Poor laws -- Great Britain
As I have stated, the medical officer's salary was intended to cover the
provision of medicine. The Guardians, however, had supplied my
predecessor with linseed-meal and mustard, but finding that I had a
great many consumptive and bronchitic patients, I was induced to apply
to the Guardians for some linseed, to enable me to give the patients
some linseed tea. Now there was one nurse in the female sick ward, by
name Charlotte Massingham, who had been in supreme authority there some
years. She was nearly always muddled; to work with her was impossible;
Charlotte invariably treated me with supreme indifference, not
unmingled with undisguised contempt. I had introduced new-fangled
notions, would have my medicines correctly given, and the patients well
attended to. On hearing that my application for the linseed had met with
success, I went up to the Workhouse. On going into the female sick ward
I told Charlotte of my having gained the assent of the Board, when,
suddenly springing up at least a foot, she came down slapping both
sides, with her arms on to the ground, with the startling observation,
"My God! linseed tea in a workhouse!" Charlotte's reign, however, was
not of long continuance after this; she died, worn out by the effects of
habitual intemperance. I heard, after she was dead, and the inmates were
free to speak, that she systematically stole the wine and brandy from
the sick.
It was obvious that one of the first points to secure was the removal of
the laundry before referred to, situated in the cellar beneath the
dining hall. The Guardians having assented to my suggestions, a contract
was entered into with the builder to put up a laundry in the back yard.
The structure was to cost some £400. On proceeding to dig out the
foundation, the workmen came on a number of skeletons, the yard having
been originally the poor burial ground of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,
for which parish the Workhouse, &c., had been built, and had been rented
by the Guardians from that parish when the Strand Union was formed. So
full was this yard of human remains, that the contractor was compelled
to go down twenty feet all round, before a foundation for the laundry
could be obtained. In making this huge trench, they disinterred the
remains of the poor Italian boy, murdered by Bishop and Williams, whose
murder was discovered by the late Mr. Partridge of King's College
Hospital, to whom Bishop and Williams had sold their victim for
anatomical purposes. Similar murders of the same kind in Edinburgh, led
to the passing of the Anatomy Act, and to the suppression of the
practice of body-snatching by the abandoned wretches who formerly
supplied Schools of Anatomy with subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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