A very large proportion of nurses are mothers, often widows, with large families, whom they support and put to service out of their wages, too often eked out by improper means, _i. e._, bribes and petty dishonesty. Many of these women are moral, sober, industrious, and doubly anxious to retain their places, on account of their children; still there are serious embarrassments in employing them. The wages of hospital nurses are not and never can be enough to supply a proper support for children, in addition to the support the mothers ought themselves to have. Consequently when children are in whole or in part lodged, fed, clothed, “educated,” and put to service out of the £50 a-year of the head-nurse, or out of the 12_s._ a-week of the nurse, the mother either stints herself of proper food, proper strong drink (we deal with practice not with theory), proper warm clothing, for the children’s sake, or she supplies the deficiency by improper means. If the nurse cannot afford to live well and abstains from dishonesty, one of two things infallibly happens--either she takes to drink, as the fallacious support of an exhausted frame, or her strength fails and she breaks down, after a few months’, sometimes a few years’ struggle. When once she has taken to drink, one of two things invariably follows (dishonesty may be presumed to ensue upon, though it often does not precede habits of drink); she is or becomes unguarded, and is soon found out, and sinks into the miserable second and far too numerous class of characterless hospital nurses, unless drink shortly finishes her; or, in the other case, she is cautious and guarded--she then becomes sly, dishonest, and thoroughly venal; she extorts gifts and takes bribes from her patients and their friends--and the friends of hospital patients, like others, are of various kinds; she commits constant acts of petty but often most dangerous dishonesty, possibly remaining an efficient and clever nurse, sometimes a favourite nurse; and, so far as regards the crime which has taken the name of immorality, a moral woman. A certain proportion of nurses are all the above, excepting drink; for though, almost without exception, every nurse who drinks takes bribes, some take bribes and do not drink.