Courage in a crisis

Text 1: A Letter in the Cholera Season, by Charlotte Ainsley

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

My dearest Mother, You will have seen in the newspapers that the cholera is among us, and I write to tell you that we are well, and that you are on no account to come. It began a fortnight ago in the courts by the river, where forty families draw their water from the same pump, and it has since crept up the hill street by street, as quietly as a cat. The bell of St Mary’s tolls so often now that the sexton has asked leave to stop it, for he says it frightens the sick to death before the disease can.

I am sorry to tell you that our betters have not covered themselves in glory. Mr Pratley, the chairman of the Board of Guardians, removed to his house at Malvern on the second day, and three of the aldermen have followed him. The mayor has issued a notice recommending prayer and lime-wash, and has not, so far as anyone knows, set foot outside his own door since. Dr Wren does what he can, but he is one man, and he has not slept in a bed since Tuesday.

The true heroes of this town are persons whose names will never be in any newspaper. There is a washerwoman in Tanner’s Row, a Mrs Biddle, who has nursed eleven of her neighbours and laid out four of them with her own hands, and who says only that somebody had to. A carter has given his cart and his horse, unpaid, to carry the sick to the fever house. Edward goes into the courts every morning with soup and comes home grey with weariness, and I am more proud of him than I can say. Pray for us, Mother, but do not come.

Text 2: Corridor Winter, by Rachel Odell

An original contemporary article.

January is always bad on the wards, but last winter was something else. By the second week we had patients on trolleys in the corridors, patients in the day room, and one elderly man spending a night in a cupboard that had been cleared of linen because there was simply nowhere else to put him. I apologised to him. He said he had slept in worse places during his national service and asked for a biscuit.

From the top floor, where the managers work, we received a great many emails. They told us to ‘escalate concerns through the appropriate channels’ and reminded us that annual leave requests for the spring must be submitted by the end of the month. One told us that the hospital was ‘operating at a heightened level of pressure’, which made the nurse beside me laugh so hard she had to sit down.

So it would be easy to write a story about cowardly bosses and heroic staff, and some of it would be true. The porters ran the length of the building all night. A cleaner called Dorota stayed four hours after her shift to help us turn patients, unpaid, because she said she could not go home and leave us like that. But I would be lying if I left out the night the director of nursing came down at two in the morning in her own clothes, took off her jacket and did the drug round on Ward 9. She did not send an email about it. She did not need to. I am not sure the system was brave. I am sure that some people in it, at every level, were.

‘Both writers show that ordinary people were braver than those in authority.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In your answer you should:

• discuss what we learn about the crisis each writer describes
• explain how far you agree that ordinary people were braver than those in authority in both texts
• compare the ways the writers present the people who helped and those in charge.

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.