A letter from a hospital, by Agnes Merriman

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter, written in 1882, a young woman training as a nurse in a large city hospital writes to her friend at home.

The Infirmary, Sunday evening

My dear Louisa,

I have now been a probationer for five weeks, and this is the first evening on which my feet have not ached too much to hold a pen. We rise at six and are on the ward by seven, and the first task of the day is to scrub the lockers and polish the brass rails of every bed before the doctors come round at ten. Sister Holt inspects them with a white handkerchief, and if it comes away grey we must begin again.

My ward has twenty-four beds, all men, mostly from the iron works and the docks. Last week I learned to make a poultice of linseed and to change a dressing without hurting the patient, which is a harder thing than you would suppose. We are not allowed to sit down in the presence of Sister, and we are paid twelve pounds for the whole of the first year, out of which we must buy our own aprons.

You asked whether I am sorry I came. I am tired, Louisa, more tired than I knew a person could be, but on Thursday an old man whom I had nursed through a fever shook my hand when he went home, and called me his little doctor. I would not give up that handshake for a hundred pounds.

(a) What is the first task of the day for the probationers? (b) How much is the writer paid for her first year? (c) What does the final paragraph suggest about the writer’s feelings towards her work?