Hope - Lesley Pearse [138]
But the single thing which distressed Hope most was that no one but her took any notice of Bennett’s instructions on hygiene. It made perfect sense to her that hands must be washed after touching a patient, that aprons and caps had to be washed daily, and that all water for drinking should be boiled. Sal and Moll were too lazy to wash either their hands, or caps and aprons, and they snorted with derision about boiling the drinking water and said the doctor was as mad as some of his patients.
Hope had never lost her conviction that the water in Bristol was full of poison. In the nearly two years she had been in the city she had never once drunk water straight from the pump; even when she was dying of thirst she boiled it and drank it as tea. Gussie and Betsy had drunk it, and they had died, while she remained healthy, so she took this as evidence that Bennett was right.
She tried to convince others of it too, pointing out that Doll and Sal only drank tea or any kind of alcohol and that was why they remained in rude health.
Bennett appreciated her spreading his gospel, but he pointed out that he couldn’t be certain that the disease came through water, as all the town’s water came from the same source. And as almost all those stricken came from the filthiest, most populous parts of the town, this did tend to support the commonly held medical opinion that the disease was airborne.
Yet no one was able to explain the entirely indiscriminate nature of the disease. Most priests, doctors, nurses and the cart drivers who had handled the sick had remained healthy. Sometimes just one person in a large family caught it, while the rest remained untouched. In some lodging houses all but a handful had died; sometimes it was just the children who were infected. There was no pattern at all.
There were plenty of extraordinary theories too. Some people placed the blame for the epidemics on the Jews in the town, which made no sense whatsoever. Others called doctors ‘Burkers’ after the infamous Burke and Hare who robbed graveyards for bodies for dissection. Some of the more strident evangelical preachers were insisting it was God’s judgement for the wholesale depravity in Bristol, and that it was spread by prostitutes around the busy ale houses.
Hope had many a discussion with Bennett about these strange ideas, and he stoutly insisted that the clergy and their pious, hypocritical followers should consider why women were forced to turn to prostitution in the first place, and do something about that.
Hope realized she was becoming increasingly captivated by Bennett. It wasn’t just that he was her only friend, or that he treated her as an equal, but because of his understanding of the real evils of poverty and his ideas on how it could be beaten.
There were plenty of gentry who made benevolent gestures, and Hope was sure that these people had good hearts. But sadly their lives were too different from those who huddled in stinking rookeries to understand that a new set of clothes, a daily hot meal or a few shillings could never solve the problem. All this did was offer temporary comfort.
Bennett likened poverty to a kind of swamp which people either stumbled into or were born in. He understood that once in it, it was hard, often impossible, to get out without help, and that for many, criminality, or selling themselves, was the only way to keep afloat.
Like his friend Mary Carpenter, he saweducation as the only real and sure ladder out of the swamp. He insisted with some passion that by giving every slum child the tools of reading and writing they could build a better life for themselves.
In a way, Hope was living proof of this. The education she had received had enabled her to understand concepts and ideas beyond the narrowconfines of the way she’d been brought up. She felt stimulated by Bennett’s somewhat radical views. He was caustic about the idle rich, and deeply suspicious of many who held prominent positions in the town, claiming they lined their own pockets at the expense of the poor.
The brightest