duty, you were the one that was going to fetch my paper.âDaisy had been instructed to offer a glass of the warm milk, which she did, though inwardly feeling that no-one could gain anyoneâs confidence with warm milk, on which the skin was just forming. At once she became an enemy who had withheld the newspaper or destroyed it or who was too crass to understand the printed word. âIt said
GALLANT SUICIDE ATTEMPT. Didnât you learn to read in Board School?â
âWeâre all of us a bit slow in here,â said Daisy. âYouâre sick of us nurses, you need some visitors. We could wire them, you know, from the telegraph office.â
He said nothing.
âThere was somebody you knew called Flo. Was that Flora, or was she Florence?â
âBitch.â
Â
âIâm not getting anywhere with my 23,â Daisy told Kate.
âHave you got a smash on him?â
âIâve got a smash on the whole ward,â said Daisy. âItâs one of my six half-days on Wednesday. If any of them have the brass to die while Iâm out, Iâll make them sorry they ever were born.â
Â
Two and a half days later James Elder had still taken nothing by the mouth. He was a screen case, and of great entertainment value to the other patients, who all assumed that because he could not be seen, he would not be able to hear what they said. To all of them, except the dying, food was of paramount interest. The doctor would have to get some kind of food into No. 23 one way or another, frontways, or backways.
Dr Sage, reckless prescriber as he was, was implacably opposed to forced feeding. âThey tell me itâs legal to do it to lunatics and to women who want to have the vote. What about it, Sister, what about it, eh, Nurse? A fortnight in the third division, hunger strike, steel gag, choke up chicken? Youâll tell me thatâs got nothing to do with respectable hospital practice. Well, theyâve thought up all sorts of dodges. In the childrenâs wards Iâve found them rubbing the little brutes with castor oil in the hope that some of it will sink in and nourish them. But I
say a man, a woman, a child, a lunatic, has the right to decide whether to go on living or not. And in all the short chapter, thatâs to say in all the long chequered story of medical science, show me one man, one woman, one child, one lunatic that doesnât know whether heâs hungry or not.â
Matronâs opinion, given only to her deputy, was that it was fortunate Dr Sage couldnât be on duty twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.
Both of them knew that Dr Sage, who had trained as an alienist, was a partner in a mental home somewhere in the country. Believing, as he did, that what is said by children and by the mentally disturbed should be considered just as seriously as any other evidence, he needed a place well away from London to make his own painstaking notes without, so to speak, appearing in character.
âIâm surprised, though, that heâs a supporter of womenâs suffrage,â said the deputy matron.
âHe isnât. He doesnât think anyone should have the vote at all.â
12
Kelly
On Wednesday, her half-day, Daisy, in her cloth coat and large tam oâshanter, walked down to the river. She had known the many voices, not all of them friendly, of the river, ever since she was a child, and missed them now she no longer crossed it twice a day. She allowed herself two minutes only, just enough to watch a barge go past, then went to the Borough Library. The Library was connected with the public wash-house by the municipal fumigation rooms, where books could be disinfected after an outbreak of disease and old clothes could be boiled before redistribution to the needy. The three long low buildings, lettered in white on their grey and red brick, were a powerful image of compulsory cleanliness, inner and outer.
In the crowded
GALLANT SUICIDE ATTEMPT. Didnât you learn to read in Board School?â
âWeâre all of us a bit slow in here,â said Daisy. âYouâre sick of us nurses, you need some visitors. We could wire them, you know, from the telegraph office.â
He said nothing.
âThere was somebody you knew called Flo. Was that Flora, or was she Florence?â
âBitch.â
Â
âIâm not getting anywhere with my 23,â Daisy told Kate.
âHave you got a smash on him?â
âIâve got a smash on the whole ward,â said Daisy. âItâs one of my six half-days on Wednesday. If any of them have the brass to die while Iâm out, Iâll make them sorry they ever were born.â
Â
Two and a half days later James Elder had still taken nothing by the mouth. He was a screen case, and of great entertainment value to the other patients, who all assumed that because he could not be seen, he would not be able to hear what they said. To all of them, except the dying, food was of paramount interest. The doctor would have to get some kind of food into No. 23 one way or another, frontways, or backways.
Dr Sage, reckless prescriber as he was, was implacably opposed to forced feeding. âThey tell me itâs legal to do it to lunatics and to women who want to have the vote. What about it, Sister, what about it, eh, Nurse? A fortnight in the third division, hunger strike, steel gag, choke up chicken? Youâll tell me thatâs got nothing to do with respectable hospital practice. Well, theyâve thought up all sorts of dodges. In the childrenâs wards Iâve found them rubbing the little brutes with castor oil in the hope that some of it will sink in and nourish them. But I
say a man, a woman, a child, a lunatic, has the right to decide whether to go on living or not. And in all the short chapter, thatâs to say in all the long chequered story of medical science, show me one man, one woman, one child, one lunatic that doesnât know whether heâs hungry or not.â
Matronâs opinion, given only to her deputy, was that it was fortunate Dr Sage couldnât be on duty twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.
Both of them knew that Dr Sage, who had trained as an alienist, was a partner in a mental home somewhere in the country. Believing, as he did, that what is said by children and by the mentally disturbed should be considered just as seriously as any other evidence, he needed a place well away from London to make his own painstaking notes without, so to speak, appearing in character.
âIâm surprised, though, that heâs a supporter of womenâs suffrage,â said the deputy matron.
âHe isnât. He doesnât think anyone should have the vote at all.â
12
Kelly
On Wednesday, her half-day, Daisy, in her cloth coat and large tam oâshanter, walked down to the river. She had known the many voices, not all of them friendly, of the river, ever since she was a child, and missed them now she no longer crossed it twice a day. She allowed herself two minutes only, just enough to watch a barge go past, then went to the Borough Library. The Library was connected with the public wash-house by the municipal fumigation rooms, where books could be disinfected after an outbreak of disease and old clothes could be boiled before redistribution to the needy. The three long low buildings, lettered in white on their grey and red brick, were a powerful image of compulsory cleanliness, inner and outer.
In the crowded
Similar Books
