Virgin Saints and MartyrsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Virgin Saints and Martyrs
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian women saints; Martyrs
Mr. Welsh says:—“On calling at the Queen’s Hotel, Birmingham [where she
was lying ill], I was told the doctor of the hospital (Dr. Maclachlan)
was with her, and thinking they were probably arranging matters
connected with the hospital, I did not go to her room, but proceeded to
the train. I had scarcely got seated when the doctor called me out, and
we entered a compartment where we were alone. He asked me when it was
intended to open the hospital. I replied, ‘On the 4th November.’ ‘Then,’
he said, ‘that will just be about the time Sister Dora will die.’
“The announcement was to me a shock of no ordinary kind, for I had not
heard of her being ill, and no one could have imagined, from the
cheerful tone of a letter I had received from her a week or so before,
that there was anything the matter with her. Not being able to fully
realise the true state of affairs, I asked him if he were jesting. He
replied he was not, and that he thought it best to let me know at once,
so that arrangements might be made for getting some one to take her
place when the hospital was opened. I said, ‘I suppose she is going to
Yorkshire?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘and that is another thing I wish to speak
to you about. She wishes to die in Walsall, and she must be removed
immediately.’
“On Sunday [the day following] I saw the chairman and vice-chairman of
the hospital. On Sunday evening I returned with Dr. Maclachlan to the
Queen’s Hotel, where he found his patient very weak. On Monday morning,
a house was taken, and the furniture she had in her rooms at the
hospital removed to it. Her old servant, who had gone to The Potteries,
was telegraphed for, and arrived in a few hours, and by midday the house
was ready for her reception. My daughter, knowing Sister Dora’s fondness
for flowers, had procured and placed on the table in the parlour a very
choice bouquet; and when all was ready, Dr. Maclachlan drove over to
Birmingham, and brought her to Walsall in his private carriage.
“The disease was now making steady progress, and it was evident that
every day she was becoming weaker; but she never lost her cheerfulness,
and any one to have seen her might have thought she was only suffering
from some slight ailment, instead of an incurable and painful disease.”
“A few hours before her death,” writes Mr. S. Welsh, “she called me to
her bedside and said, ‘I want you to promise that you will not, when I
am gone, write anything about me; _quietly I came among you, and quietly
I wish to go away._’” And this desire of hers would have been faithfully
complied with had not misrepresentations fired the gentleman to whom the
request was made to take up his pen, not in defence of her, but in the
correction of statements that affected certain persons who were alive. I
must refer the reader for the detailed account of her last hours to Miss
Lonsdale’s book. One remarkable fact must not be omitted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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