The Slum Sisters attached to the Settlement, who are distinct from the
Maternity Nurses, visit the very poorest and worst neighbourhoods, for
the purpose of helping the sick and afflicted, and incidentally of
cleaning their homes. Also, they find out persons who are about
sixty-nine years of age, and contribute to their maintenance, so as to
save them from being forced to receive poor-law relief, which would
prevent them from obtaining their old-age pensions when they come to
seventy.
Here is an illustration of the sort of case with which these Slum
Sisters have to deal; perhaps, I should say, the easiest sort of case.
An old man and his wife whom they visited, lived in a clean room. The
old woman fell sick, and before she died the Slum Sisters gave her a
bath, which, as these poor people much object to washing, caused all
the neighbours to say that they had killed her. After his wife's
death, the husband, who earned his living by selling laces on London
Bridge, went down in the world, and his room became filthy. The Slum
Sisters told him that they would clean up the place, but he forbade
them to touch the bed, which, he said, was full of mice and beetles.
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