Miss Nightingale performed the duties, as we have seen, of a Purveyor to the sick and wounded portion of the British army. The duty was assumed by her only because the home authorities had been deficient in foresight, or the authorities on the spot were inefficient and hampered by official restrictions. Hence her earlier letters to Mr. Herbert were largely filled with urgent suggestions for the sending of Government stores. She begs for "hair mattresses, or even flock, as cheaper." The French hospitals were furnished throughout with hair mattresses; the British soldier was suffering terribly from bed-sores. She pleads for knives and forks: "the men have to tear their meat like wild beasts." She suggests mops, plates, dishes, towelling, disinfectants, and so forth,--obvious requirements, no doubt, but, as Mr. Herbert said, the responsible authorities seem to have shrunk sometimes from making requisitions lest they should thereby confess the inadequacy of their preparations. It was Miss Nightingale, again, who suggested the need of carpenters to do odd jobs in the vast and imperfectly equipped Turkish buildings which served for the British hospitals. She expressed herself most gratefully for an "invaluable reinforcement" of them which Mr. Herbert had sent out; but their arrival necessitated a depletion in one department of her private stores. "These men," she wrote (Feb. 19, 1855), "I had to find with knives, forks, and spoons, in default of the Purveyor, who besides would not provide them with rations unless the Officer of Engineers wrote 'urgent' and asked it 'as a favour.'"