Letter to Jane Senior
1874-02-05

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Please address Embley
Romsey
35 South St.
Park Lanw W.
Feb 5/47
My dear Madam
I write my poor answer (overcome with sorrow
(God's dear Mrs. Bracebridge, more than mother
to me, is dead too) & with illness &
with the most painful &harassing of all (family)
business besides my usual work).
But I will do my best: only regretting that
it will be so far short of your best: & thanking
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God that you feel yourself called for life
to this great work of yours: & trusting
that He will give you health & strength for
it.
Pray take care of yourself: & do not
rush to work, (as I have been always compelled
to do): but give yourself a rest. You
cannot think what an intense impression my
own experience leaves me about this.
I am 'appalled' that your appointment
has not yet been confirmed by the Treasury.
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It is a national misfortune, if it is not:
Your "Appendix" is far from hopeful.
One can see far more clearly how a
better system could be introduced that
how such a system as exists can be
improved.
Take the evil characters shown in
your Notes of Cases:
the result of early neglect & early bad example:
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partly hereditary
And partly - - - they are doing about the
worst thing they can for young children;
namely, massing them into great Schools
where no habits of self-dependence & self-
restraint are or can be taught:
beyond & outside which all is for them
unknown or hopeless.
[F.N.'s "Appendix" - There is a large Misericordo
Anglici: "Union School" - well known & with an
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2 (Anglici = pauper)
immense reputation - at Paris - for orphan
or deserted girls, who are kept till the
age of 18. The Sisters of Charity, (Soeurs
de S. Vincent de Paul), have the entire charge
of it: excellent, well educated women, as
I know from personal friendships.
And the School is actually self-supporting
or very nearly from the girls' work.
Into that Misericorde I entered myself: sleeping & eating
under the roof: even being ill under the roof:
a capital way to learn what the results of the work
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really are - & in all points conforming
myself as an inmate.
The School is really a Model School:N.B. the girls are never turned adrift:
but carefully placed out.
Now mark the results: wh: I give from actual
personal knowledge, the knowledge of an inmate.
The girls have no power of independence, no
wish for it: no Christian Self-command:
no moral or physical power of making their
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own way, no self-reliance: no nothing.
And the longer they stay in the School, the
moire idiotic, stunted in mind & body, helpless
they become - - - - - - -
Till the first Class, the girls from 16 to 18,
appeared to me the most useless machines
- for doing anything but Machinery Needle work
- I had ever seen in all my much-driven
life:
Machines all the worse for having - I will not call
them womanly - but animal instincts: worse for having I will
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not call it power of right & wrong but
power of wrong.
They knew no kind of domestic work: they
could not even make a bed: tho' of
course they fumbled their own.
They were never sent on a message or errand:
they could not be trusted.
They never went without the walls of their
(large & healthy) Recreation ground, in
charge of one another: rarely even with a Soeur.
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3
They had no desire, no power, no exercise
or earning their own bread: or of becoming
human beings at all: farther than as
cyphers ranged after the first figure
who was a Soeur.
[There were large Barracks near: & the
Soeurs stated themselves to me that
if the girls above 12 or 13 were allowed
to go beyond their own walls, they invariably
fell a prey to the Soldiers' vice:
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& that most of these girls ultimately
went on the Stretts - i.e. not on the streets:
you know the (much worse) equivalent at Paris.]
It was so totally unlike the cheerful, frugal
active, self-dependence (tho' not over-
-moral) of the French grisette or peasant
that that School is really a type of
what this kind of education produces
out of the same class as the grisettes come from.
[The food was plentiful: but would have been
heavy even for English meat-eating Servants]
The religion was absolutely nothing (tho' the Soeurs
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were truly religious) but muttering hymns &
prayers - it matters little whether to
God or the Virgin: (it was to the Virgin.)
When one sees a bad School, one says: oh
the good a good School might do:
when one sees a good School, one sees
that no School can do good to pauper children
in this kind of way.
This is a long story: one almost better known to
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you than to me:
so I will cut it short & only allude to
another sort of School:
large also but divided into small groups
of children where ages are mixed:
where the elder girls do all the domestic
work under super intendence: look after
the small ones: etc. etc.
& where it is promotion to appoint them, the
elder ones, to this office.
When a girl has won by years & by good
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4
conduct, an "appointment" to this little servant-
ship (in her own School) she receives 'wages'
- hardly more than what her own clothes
cost. And out of her 'wages', she is
expected to find her own clothes: & does
it. And this is an important element
in her Education for future life & self-dependence.
[I need not say that the 3 Rs posper all
the better for it.]
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2. In other words,
your facts are all in favour of
Boarding-out:
or (as an imitation & an alternative)
of Schools divided up into small families
where the elder girls do the work under
a good servant
(your own plan)
And the sooner in life this is done,
the better.
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3. Do you think that any voluntary
oversight is likely to do much
(it may of course do something)
v. your Scheme for Supervision of girls in place:
towards improving matters?
With such tempers & histories, will not
these girls always consider themselves
as wronged: & will they not always
try to elude their inspectors & escape?
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Or rather will not those profit by it
most who need it least?
And those who need inspection most
profit by it least: or not at all?
4. Is not the real question:
how to train the Infant shoot
& implant in it elements of good.
This is not done by the present Schools:
- cannot be done by any massing together.
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5
5. Subdivision
domestic teaching
& care (imitation of mother's care)
are worth all the Supervision
all the Schools or Universities
in existence for such as these children.
6. Your proposal rules for oversight
are as or more worthy of trial than
any I could suggest.
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But the animal cannot be trusted.
It is not proposed to train it so that
it can be trusted.
And to provide against the results
it is to be police'd.
But with all my heart & soul I say
God speed the right.
And 'Try' - - - - -
- A Committee and a "Home" by voluntary effort
- & see how it works.
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7. A caution you are well acquainted with:
the amazing difference there is among some
untrained Voluntary Ladies & others.
[I was once connected with a large District
Organization worked by Voluntary "Lady
Superintendents" with Trained Nurses,
one under each: & Central Office,
Home, & funds.
All that one could say of it was that
where the Voluntary "Lady" was good & wise,
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the thing worked well & wisely:
& where she was not - very much the contrary
- it degenerated into mere alms giving:
sometimes into the vexatious interference of an
inexperienced "Lady" with those under her
or visted by her who knew more than
herself.
Within the last few weeks I was told by the
promoter that with their present experience
they would have arranged it differently: more
like the Elberfeld plan.
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7
10. Sanitary Teaching:
most important:
applicable to all Schools
Requisites: 1. that Teachers should themselves
be taught:
2. a good simple School book.
Will you not see Mr. Forster & consult him?
& let him consult you? -
All depends on the temper of School Boards.
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So far as concerns pauper children:
is it not infinitely more required to give
moral & religious culture
& self-restraint.
Without these, is not teaching
Health-laws to such subjects
pretty nearly useless?
Is not self-restraint the foundation
of Personal Hygiene?
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Should not teaching Health-Laws
be limited in these Schools to
personal instruction in all kinds of
cleanliness
& fresh air -
And above all a never-ceasing protest
against drunkenness
& selfishness -
Would not this be enough to begin with:
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& then the Senior General of Poor Law Infantry
could expand her agency according to
experience
not aiming at too much at first -
"Go on & prosper" in God's name.
11. P.S. One need hardly say:
let the proposed Central Home & Visiting plan be tried on a small
scale: worked alongside the existing Schools:
& if it succeeds, then go for a grant in aid.
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[F.N.'s "Appendix"]
1. P.S. So far from thikning Pauper work hopeless,
some of the best servants & School-Masters I have
ever known have been pauper children.
One, a boy out of a Workhouse School, was placed
with dear Dean Dawes at his School, & became
our National School-Master in one of my Father's
parishes.
Of another family of 4 girls, the two eldest
are in service with me: the two youngest of 5 &
9 uears in good single-handed places: [yes, laugh:]
they are visted by the two elder sisters in my service:
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that is the true 'supervision' of these things
of 5 & upwards:
come to see me:
& the 2 elder girls regularly help to clothe these
things out of their own wages -
Both the 2 younger go to School a part of their day
They come to see me:
In my grand matronly way I was uneasy at
sending home one in a 'Bus by itself on a dark
Sunday night  5 miles to it's 'place' near London
But I thought: I will send it in a cab
with it's eldest sister (now 20) to the Omibus Terminus
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& then it will take no harm:
when the object up's & says
"I shall be quite uneasy!!! (sic) till I hear that
Sister Fanny gets back to you safe: I don't
like!!! (sic) her going back alone: you know
people might be rude to her: without me:
Let Sister Fanny write to me that she has got
back safe" (sic)
Do you think that that thing will ever come to
grief like the Paris girls?
And is not this the best education? These children
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are much older now: & doing as well:
but the 'object' talks exactly as if it
were a Matron: or a Grandmama: of it's Master
& Mistress "who can't do without me at home".
And it is true.
F.N.'s Appendix No. 2.
2. The greatest griefs we have are at our
Workhouse Infirmaries:
children claimed by their bad mothers:
we have one now whose mother has (luckily)
run away: the Matron keeps it in her own rooms:
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- it would otherwise go back to the Workhouse -
& sends it to a National Day School at
Highgate. It is 7 years old - a little girl.
Do you know of any small orphanage -
- not pauper - where this child could be placed?
Do not trouble to answer this, unless
you do.
3. Sanitary Teaching in Schools:
P.S. All my papers are in London: I can't refer to
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them. But I dare say you know
the Lady Secretary of a Leeds "School & Society"
who is interested about Sanitary
Teaching in Schools. [She has corresponded
with me]
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I feel that with all this writing I have said
nothing to help you. What is true is not
new (to you) -
But then I think you can make bread out of
anything. & I can write no shorter & no better now -
I think you have chosen the greatest of
all the objects of the day: the Poor Law:
& I should be too glad, if you think I can give
the least little help, that you should call
upon me at any future time - whenever you will.
God bless the General of Pauper Infantry: and
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may she live a thousand years & a day
ever your most faithful servant
Florence Nightingale
Mrs. Senior