plan, the previous care will be to a great degree lost, as any one acquainted with the condition and temptations of friendless girls will

own.

"It is my firm belief that nothing but an infusion of voluntary labour and interest into this portion of educational work will ever make it successful. Whether this object will be best attained by gradually working upon public opinion (and there are encouraging proofs that it is taking this direction), or by some official recommendation or order to this effect,* is a point which I hope will be considered. It is, meantime, much to be regretted, that just where improvement of this kind is most needed, it is most decidedly either ignored or rejected.

"Lady visitors and inspectors should act under the guardians, or Poor Law inspectors, and should, in all points connected with the girls' * Actually the case in 1872.

schools, send in their reports to them. There would thus be that 'communion of labour' which alone can procure successful results."

The year 1860 saw another important branch of the work begun, the lead in which was taken by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, whose sympathies had been warmly enlisted on behalf of the sick and incurable whom she had for some time visited in the wards of the Bristol Workhouse. Thus arose the "Plea for Destitute Incurables," which was made by means pamphlets, letters in all the leading papers, papers read before the Social Science Association at Glasgow, and finally by an appeal to the Poor Law Board. The proposal was, that, considering the large number of destitute incurables who were compelled to enter the workhouses (as there were few, if any, hospitals fitted to receive them), their case should be considered apart from that of the general inmates, and they should be placed in wards where additional

and almost necessary comforts should be allowed to be provided for them by benevolent individuals. It was stated that as many as 80,000 of such helpless sufferers passed annually through the workhouses of England, and few persons knew or concerned themselves as to their condition, or the provisions made for their comfort.

It was decided to prepare a petition which should be sanctioned and signed by the leading physicians and surgeons of the London hospitals, stating the case as regarded these incurables, who, the medical officers were well aware, could not be kept for more than a brief period in any of the hospitals established for the cure of the sick.

"We, the undersigned physicians and surgeons of the metropolitan hospitals, having had our attention called to the condition of destitute incurables, can bear testimony, from our position and experience, to the fact that there is a very

large number of persons afflicted with incurable disease, who are not proper objects for admission into the general hospitals, and who have no other alternative than to become inmates of a workhouse.

"We witness almost daily the pitiable and helpless condition of persons so situated, and are often obliged to refuse them admission, in consequence of the regulations of the institutions to which we are respectively attached. These regulations are absolutely necessary, for the reason that the general hospitals (except in some rare cases, as the Middlesex Hospital with respect to cancer) were established for the treatment of curable diseases, and not as abodes for those who are permanently and incurably disabled.

"The persons who are so disabled, whether from advanced consumption, or from cancer, or other causes, require, and ought to have, more care and attention, and more so-called 'com

forts,' than the general inmates of a workhouse; and we are decidedly of opinion that they should be placed in wards exclusively appropriated to them, in which, under proper regulations, and with the sanction of the guardians, they might receive such extra comforts as private benevolence might bestow."

This petition was signed by ninety of the most influential medical men belonging to all the London hospitals, and, supported and sanctioned by such weight and authority, the proposal was sent out to every Board of Guardians, with the offer to assist, by means of a central fund, in carrying out the plan which would include the supply of many expensive articles not allowed from the rates. To the prospectus thus circulated fifty answers were at the time received, taking, of course, very different views of the proposal. Some objected to the voluntary interference, others said that it was not legal or necessary, or that space was not