not otherwise know, but which would reflect upon their management, they freely and generously threw open the wards of the hospital, and from first to last have cordially welcomed our visitors, have listened to and acted upon their suggestions, and have furthered their plans in every way. The Commissioners have themselves told us there were many household details in a large hospital only understood by women, and they would gladly avail themselves of the help we had to offer.

But to return to the experiences of our two Local Visiting Committees for the Westchester County Poorhouse and Bellevue Hospital.

At the time of the organization of the former, General James Bowen, one of the New York City Commissioners of Charities and Corrections, having heard of the proposed plan, called to ask if it were possible to get volunteer corps of lady-visitors for all the City Charities. He stated that such suggestions as might be made by judicious lady-visitors would be of material assistance to the Commissioners in making the City Charities what they wished them to be. Under these favorable auspices the Local Visiting Committee for Bellevue Hospital was organized, on the 26th of January, 1872. Bellevue Hospital is situated at the foot. of Twenty-sixth street, on the East river, and is the largest pauper hospital of New York City. It accommodates on an average eight hundred patients.

To any one familiar with the County Poorhouses of our State, the public charities of New York City afford a most gratifying contrast. Our citizens are hardly aware of the immense improvements effected in them within the past twenty-five years. The visitor at once perceives evidences of liberal, humane and enlightened management. Accordingly the members of the Bellevue Association found much to commend, but they also found much needing improve.

ment.

The laundry was in charge of an old pauper-man, the

steam-mangle broken, no supply of soap, the linen consequently in a terrible condition. This was represented to the Commissioners, and a respectable woman was put in charge of the laundry. In a few weeks the Visitors were able to report this department as well managed; and clothes, beds and bedding clean and in good order. A separate kitchen and an extra cook for special diet were asked for, and were furnished. More towels, more tinbasins, covered dishes to keep the meals hot, better cooked general diet, many other things conducive to the comfort of the patients, were asked for, and were ordered by the Commissioners. The horrible condition of the pavilionwards, which, filled with very sick persons, were also used as sleeping-places for vagrants when too late for the boat, on their way to Blackwell's Island, was reported and promptly reformed.

The Visitors asked permission to prepare plans for the reorganization of the linen, laundry, and kitchen departments of the hospital. This was granted; and members of the Bellevue Association visited not only the best hospitals of this city, but also those of Boston and Philadelphia, toprepare themselves for making these plans. But although they were carefully drawn up, they were never presented; as, in the opinion of the ladies, their successful operation required more intelligent responsible labor than can at present be obtained in the hospital. It is a question whether the present use in our city hospitals of the labor of these "ten-days prisoners "-persons committed for intoxication and for petty offenses for this short term is not, apart from its immoral effect in the hospital, of doubtful benefit, even as an economical measure.

After the experience of a few months, the Visitors cameto the conclusion that what was most needed was a better class of women as nurses, educated and trained for their position; that this would ensure attention to the physicians' orders, secure the humane treatment of the patients, and

elevate the whole tone of the hospital as nothing else could. Accordingly they asked the Commissioners to consider a plan for a Training School for Nurses to be attached to Bellevue Hospital, something of the nature of Miss Nightingale's Schools in England. The Commissioners immediately passed a resolution referring the consideration of the subject to the Medical Board of the Hospital, and wrote to the ladies expressing a hearty approval of their project. This was last spring; three months after our Visitors had first entered the hospital. And now summer had come, and with it some work for the members of the Hospital Committee of the State Charities Aid Association. Among the duties assumed by this Committee is the "preparation of plans for the kitchen, linen, laundry and nursing depart ments of hospitals." One of its members, Dr. W. Gill Wylie, volunteered to go to England to study the subject of nursing, while others, at home, got their information from the libraries. Dr. Wylie examined most carefully the practical working of the Loudon and Liverpool training schools, besides visiting similar institutions on the Continent. His report has been most valuable to us, as also a long letter he has received from Miss Florence Nightingale. For further details, we refer you to the accompanying Document No. 1, issued by this Association in December last, being a Report of our Hospital Committee upon a Training School for Nurses to be attached to Bellevue Hospital.

The plan for the Training School having been proposed, and its approval obtained from both Commissioners and Medical Board, it has now been placed in the hands of the Bellevue Hospital Visiting Committee for practical application. The amount required to start the school on a proper basis is $20.000, and this sum is now being raised by the Visitors. The interest in the success of the plan is so great that they have already raised over $14,000 during the past three weeks. Some of our most eminent physicians and surgeons have offered to give instruction to the nurses by

the bedsides of the patients, and it is hoped that the school may be open for the reception of pupils by next May. The pupils must be educated, intelligent women, of good moral character, who are desirous of entering upon this work as a career of usefulness, as well as for the new profession it opens to them. For it is a profession, a new field of labor, offered to the women of this country for the first time. Those desiring further information upon the subject can -obtain it at our office.

Meanwhile the ladies continue their regular weekly visits to the hospital, and every month cheering accounts are given of improvements made in all departments excepting the nursing. And this the proposed school will remedy.

It is scarcely necessary to comment upon the very great success that has attended the work of the Bellevue Hospital Visiting Committee. It is due in large measure to the earnestness, faithfulness and untiring zeal of the members of the Association. That in so large an association of volunteers-seventy in number, all active workers, all very earnest in their work-such a high order of discipline should be maintained, reflects most favorably not only upon the corps of Visitors themselves, but upon the two ladies who have successively presided over them.

But their success is pre-eminently due to the hearty furtherance of their wishes by the authorities of the hospital -the Commissioners, physicians and warden. They and we are equally to be congratulated upon the many improvements in Bellevue Hospital during the past year, and which we hope to find still further advanced by the introduction of the Training School. Further details of the work of the Bellevue Hospital Visiting Committee may be found in their first annual report, which accompanies this.

We are now obliged to turn to a darker picture. The Visiting Committee for the Westchester County Poorhouse was organized on the 9th of January, 1872. The institution, which they proposed to visit fortnightly, is the fourth

largest County Poorhouse in the State, containg about three hundred and seventy pauper inmates-men and women, children and old people, the sick, the insane, the blind, deafand-dumb, and idiots. For a further description of the institution, and the spirit in which the Visitors proposed to work, I refer you to the pamphlet printed by the Committee last winter. Having no authority in the management of the af fairs of the institution, they assumed none, but hoped to find the Superintendents of the Poor willing to allow them to work in concert with them. With the full knowledge and sanction of the Superintendents they began their work. They took little comforts to the sick, they opened a sewing school for the children, they found places for some of the women who were able to take them. For the sake of ensuring harmony of action, they met the Superintendents once a month at the Poorhouse. So long as the ladies were contented to work themselves, and make no criticism upon the management of the institution, everything worked smoothly. But in the course of visiting they became aware of many things needing immediate reform: an absence of classification which led to gross immorality, want of enlightened treatment of the insane, no nursing for the sick; the children badly fed, badly clothed, badly taken care of, and exposed to the degrading influence of those in immediate charge of them.

The children, about sixty in number, are in the care of an old pauper woman, whose daughter and whose daughter's child, both born in the poorhouse, make her one of three generations of paupers. The daughter assists in the care of the children. She has a contagious disease of the eyes which is, apparently, communicated to them. The children are neither properly clothed nor fed; but saddest of all is to see the stolid look gradually stealing over the faces of these little ones, as all the joy of their lives is starved out of them-to think what these children must grow up to, what they must become, if they are not soon