The opening move in her campaign was made in December 1864. There had been an inquest on the death of one Timothy Daly, which had figured in the newspapers as "Horrible Treatment of a Pauper." The facts, as ultimately sifted, were not in this particular case as bad as they were painted in the press, but the circumstances were distressing and public opinion was excited. The situation was in that favourable condition for moving Ministers when there is a feeling in the air that "something must be done." Miss Nightingale seized the opportunity to open communications with the President of the Poor Law Board, Mr. Villiers. She did not in this first letter disclose her whole scheme, though she said just enough to show that she had considered the subject in its larger bearings. She knew the art of beginning on a moderate, and even a humble, note. She presumed to write because the case involved a question of nursing, in which matter she had had some practical experience; she had, moreover, been "put in trust by her fellow-countrymen with the means of training nurses." She described what was to be done in the Liverpool Infirmary by a Matron who had been trained under the "Nightingale Fund," and she invited the Minister's attention to the possibility of preventing the scandals, with which the newspapers were ringing, by starting some scheme of a like kind in London. This letter, in the composition of which Dr. Sutherland had a hand, went straight to its mark. Mr. Villiers at once replied (Dec. 31, 1864) that he would like to communicate with Miss Nightingale personally on the subject. In January the interview took place, and this was the beginning of a long series of personal and written communications between them during the next few years. On one occasion early in 1865 Mr. Villiers, being prevented by official business from keeping an appointment with Miss Nightingale, begged her to receive in his place his right-hand man, Mr. H. B. Farnall, Poor Law Inspector for the Metropolitan district. Mr. Farnall called, and he and Miss Nightingale became as thick as conspirators in no time. For Poor Law purposes he soon became the Chief of her Staff. Mr. Farnall was a man after her own heart. He not only knew the facts with which he had to deal, but he felt them, with something of her "divine impatience." "It's intolerable to me," he said, "to know that there are some 12,000 gasping and miserable sick poor whom we might solace and perhaps in some 5000 cases save, and yet that we have to let them wait while the world gets ready to get out of bed and think about it all." He was a keen and broad-minded reformer, and Miss Nightingale's ideas were upon lines which he too had considered. He was an old official hand, but he hated official obstruction: "all this is treason to King Red Tape, but I know that the old King is always happy _after_ a change, though he gets very red while the change progresses." Miss Nightingale instantly set her new ally to work.