DOMESTIC SERVICE AND FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE [To to Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] Sie,—In your issue of the Spectator for September 19th there is a letter in which it is proposed to try to raise the status of domestic servants, as Florence Nightingale raised sick nursing.
I think, as a nurse of many years' standing, some of which have been spent in Private Nursing, I can safely say that to try to raise the status of a domestic servant to that of a nurse is almost impossible, for what, after all, constitutes the status of a nurse is the sacredness and intimacy of her work that raises her for the time being to the level of her surroundings, whether she is related to a bishop or a chimney sweep. - A nurse, of course, generally associates with the family in which she is nursing, taking her meals with them, etc., be they high or low ; and when domestic servants have the same length and same kind of training, and are equally fitted to take the same place in the family, it will then be possible to think of them in the same category. There are nurses, one knows, who like to stand on their dignity—we hope they are few and far between—but the rest desire to be just " the angel in the house," earning the gratitude of the sick and suffering whom they have come to relieve and not worrying as to whether they belong to this or that grade of the social scale.—I am, [All that Miss Ann Pope intended was to hold up a very high ideal for domestic service. She was perfectly right. Domestic service instead of being despised must be recognized as a science which can hardly be exceeded in importance.
—En. Spectator.]
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