Another expedition of great importance was an extension of the Liverpool experiment to London. In 1868 Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Wyatt, the leader of a reform party in St. Pancras, had entered into correspondence with Miss Nightingale with regard to the new Infirmary (built under the Act of 1867) at Highgate; he submitted the plans of the building, and suggested the introduction of Nightingale Nurses. She approved the plans, encouraged him in his good work, and in the following year (1869) Miss Elizabeth Torrance was appointed matron, with nine nurses under her. The experiment was presently extended, and a training school for nurses was established at the Infirmary. There are about one hundred letters from Miss Torrance a year, a figure which will give some idea of the close touch which Miss Nightingale kept with important lieutenants. She considered Miss Torrance "the most capable Superintendent they had yet trained" (1870), and the letters bear out the estimate. They are those of a canny, capable and devoted woman--taking everything quietly as part of the day's work, with no fussiness or needless self-importance. "I have never seen such nurses," wrote the Medical Superintendent, when Miss Torrance and her staff had been at work for some months; "they are so thoroughly conversant with disease that one feels quite on one's mettle in practice. What strikes me most is the real interest they take in the work, and this is the secret of their success"--not attainable by the pauper nurses whom they displaced. Inspectors, Guardians, and other officials would have done well to feel quite on their mettle in Miss Torrance's presence also; for her letters show her to have been possessed of a humorous shrewdness which took the measure of men, by no means always at their own valuation. Miss Torrance amongst other reforms introduced useful work into the occupation of the inmates. "The achievement I am most proud of," she wrote (1871), "is getting the men's suits cut out and made. I found a tailor in No. 2 Ward who cut out some, and I sent them into Nos. 1 and 4 to be made, but there was a tailor in No. 1 who made difficulties, 'You see, ma'am, it's such a very old-fashioned cut.'" Once a week at least the Matron wrote reporting progress or difficulties to Miss Nightingale, who replied with advice, books, presents. Nurses, of whom the Matron reported well, came in batches to see Miss Nightingale. "They returned," wrote Miss Torrance, of one occasion of the kind, "beaming with delight, but as they all talked about it at once I did not gather very clearly what passed. Sister A., however, feared that Sister B. 'must have tried Miss Nightingale.'" Sister B., it seems, had the same fear about Sister A. Nurses and Matron alike regarded their reception by Miss Nightingale as a high privilege. "I always feel refreshed _for months_," wrote Mrs. Wardroper (March 1871), "after one of those affectionate receptions