THE LATE MRS. NASSAU SENIOR'S WORK
WE gave last week a brief notice of the late Mrs. Nassau Senior, and of her employment as Inspector of Work- houses ; but there are some aspects of that work on which it may be of interest to dwell a little more fully, while the first freshness of the loss which so many have sustained through her death is yet felt.
When the President of the Local Government Board, Mr. Stansfeld, first appointed her Assistant-Inspector of Workhouses, it was with the express desire of obtaining " a woman's view " of the management of the girls and infants in our great metropolitan pauper schools, of the children's health and happiness in the schools, and of the tendency of the education received there to fit them for their after-life, especially as domestic servants. When the idea is once suggested, the reasonableness of employing a woman to superintend such work as this is so obvious, that the only wonder is that Mrs. Senior's should have been the first appointment of the kind. The fact that it was the first made her work in many respects more difficult, and it also gives a special interest to the manner in which it was carried out. Another reason for inviting public attention to this matter is that no suc- cessor having been appointed to Mrs. Senior—whose resignation, rendered necessary by severe illness, followed quickly upon that of the late Ministry—many of her plans for the benefit of the girls necessarily fell into abeyance, some part of them being already so far matured as to allow of their being, in a measure, carried out by voluntary agency, while other parts must of neces- sity be laide aside until another lady shall be placed in a similar position of authority. It seems well that both these parts of her work should be kept in remembrance, in order that no opportunity of furthering them may be lost.
Mrs. Senior's first act on receiving her appointment was to call together a few female friends who had already more or less experi- ence in work of this kind, and to form them into a sort of in- formal committee, with whom she could take counsel from time to time, and some of whom could help her in the inquiries she had to make. The work naturally divided itself into two branches,—first, the investigation of the condition of the children in the schools ; and, secondly, such inquiry as it might be possible to make into the histories of the girls after leaving the schools. The first branch of the work was necessarily done from beginning to end by herself personally, though she was generally accom- panied by one or other of her friends and helpers in her visits to the schools; the second could be more or less delegated to others, although she did in fact do a large part of it herself, and was most careful in apportioning, recording, and sifting all that was done for her.
The result of Mrs. Senior's observations at the sixteen metro- politan pauper schools is embodied in the first part of her Report, and in comparing that Report with those of the other Inspectors published in the Blue-book for 1874, any competent and impartial reader must feel the value of the specially motherly character of her observations, not as superior, but as comple- mentary to, the vigorous and often masterly reports of her col- leagues. The children's looks and manners, the making of their beds, their nightgowns and pinafores and baths, their food, their toys and games, and all the tiny details which go for so much in a child's well-being, are described as none but a mother could describe them, with a genuine haunting sense of their real importance, and a yearning desire to win for all these little ones the cherishing care she knew so well how to bestow. And not only did Mrs. Senior see the children with a true mother's eyes, but the matrons, and schoolmistresses, and nurses could talk to her of their difficulties and their hopes and wishes for the children, as women never can talk to the kindest and most patient of men. It is not disinclination, so much as the want of what may really be called a common language, which makes it so diffi- cult for women to consult a man upon nursery affairs.
The second branch of Mrs. Senior's work was much more laborious, and in its results much less definite, though, as it seemed to us then, and still seems, not less important and sig- nificant. After much consideration, and consultation with the most competent advisers of both sexes within reach, Mrs. Senior decided on obtaining the names and addresses of all the girls who had been sent to service from three of the most typical schools in the year 1868, and tracing their subsequent history as carefully as possible for the five years which had passed since that time. However necessarily inconclusive, and possibly in some respects misleading, the results of such an inquiry might be, it seemed to be the only available means of in any degree testing the system by its results. This proceeding of Mrs. Senior's pro- voked much criticism and even censure in some quarters ; but having deliberately adopted it with the single intention of gaining light for practical guidance, and having both conducted the in- quiry and stated its results with the utmost possible fairness, giving them for what they were worth, with the fullest explanation of the means employed in arriving at them, Mrs. Senior never allowed herself to be unduly disturbed by any unfriendly comments, and this is certainly not the time for alluding further to such comments. The effect of these inquiries upon Mrs. Senior's own mind was to impress it with a very strong sense of the great need of some systematic effort to supply, by a combination of official and voluntary agency, the protection and watchful advice so sorely needed by the multitude of friend- less (or worse than friendless) young girls sent out year by year to struggle for existence in this great city. The bare fact that the age at which they are generally sent to their first situations is fourteen, and that the supervision of the Guardians, as repre- sented by two visits in each year, supposed to be paid by the very hard-worked relieving-officers or other officials, ceases at sixteen, or earlier, if the girl leave her first situation, is enough to convince those who will think over what it implies how sadly these poor children stand in need of further " mothering." Mrs. Senior had given a great deal of time and thought to the preparation of a scheme for this object, and when illness forced her to resign her office, in November, 1874, she accompanied her letter of resignation by a statement of the plan by which she proposed to combine official with voluntary work for this purpose. This particular scheme could scarcely be carried out in its completeness unless some lady should again hold a similar appointment, but out of its fragments arose the present Society for Befriending Young Servants, which has now under its care between three and four hundred girls from the metropolitan pauper schools, and in connection with which 120 ladies, living in different parts of London and the suburbs, are engaged in " be- friending" both workhouse and other friendless young girls in their respective neighbourhoods.
The ladies forming this Society are doing their work as much as possible in concert with the Boards of Guardians, eight of which have agreed regularly to furnish the Society with the names of girls leaving school for service and the addresses of their mis- tresses, and it is hoped that this co-operation will become more
and more thorough as the work becomes better known. But it may be easily conceived how much easier and more effectual the co-operation between the Poor-Law authorities and the volunteer ladies might be made, if a lady were still occupying a high official position which would make her a natural link between the Schools and the Society. Mrs. Senior herself could, of course, while holding her official appointment, take no part in the forma- tion of this voluntary society, and the illness which terminated her official work prevented her ever taking any other part in it than that of one of its warmest friends and well-wishers. Her report had, in great measure, furnished the original impulse which animated its founders, and to the close of her life the welfare of the Society was an object of the deepest interest to her.
In looking back upon the work done by Mrs. Senior in the short time during which she held her office, it is impossible for those who watched it closely not to remember gratefully how largely her power to accomplish it was increased by the never- failing, most generous, and considerate support and sympathy of Mr. Stansfeld. Their acquaintance began with a view to this appointment, but it ripened into a friendship deeply valued by ter, and strengthened by their remarkable coincidence of thought and feeling respecting the objects most earnestly aimed at by both.
It would indeed be difficult for any Government to find a woman so qualified as was Mrs. Nassau Senior for the post she held. Few women present so pure and noble a type of mother- hood. Her unreserved self-devotion to the care of all to whom she could minister was inspired by an absolutely single-minded longing for their good, and accompanied by gifts of winning and confiding sweetness, broad, simple, human sympathy, and re- markable uprightness and tenacity of mind, which actually reduced the difficulties and annoyances of her work to a minimum, and -enabled her to pass through those which remained with a certain -unconscious victory. But rare as was the combination in her of energy, goodness, and grace, there was something by no means rare among women, because essentially feminine in that direction of her best energies, which made them especially available for the service of the babies and the motherless girls whose chief claim is their helplessness. It will indeed be a misfortune for the public service if Mr. Stansfeld's example in appointing a woman to this most maternal office is not followed by his successors.
C. E. S.
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