A CRIMEAN NURSE

Waikato Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5156, 13 November 1912, Page 3

A CRIMEAN NURSE

Sister Mary Stanislaus Joseph, who was Florence Nightingale’s right hand throughout the noble work of nursing in the Crimea, has just celebrated her ninetieth birthday in the Convent of St. John and St. Elizabeth, at St. John’s Wood, London. In self-sacrfice and in what proved far more useful—talent for organisation and management—Sister Stanislaus was not a whit behind the noble woman upon whose name has been showered all the glory of that crusade of the Crimea. Florence Nightingale herself was never slow to speak with gratitude of the devoted band of Catholic Sisters of Mercy who enabled her to crown her great enterprise with success, and until her death she was a firm friend of the venerable lady who is now spending her declining years in St. John’s Wood. Sister Stanilaus is deaf, and her sight is failing, but her eyes light up when visited by the few intimate friends of her old age, and with them she manages to carry on a lively conversation. She celebrated her ninetieth birthday by coming out of her retreat and joining all the sisters at dinner, and there were some speeches by the leading sisters in honour of their guest. This gave the venerable lady great satisfaction. There are few women who can look back upon a life so crowded with work of public usefulness as that of Sister Stanislaus has been. She entered the Convent of the Bermondsey Sisters of Mercy on August 21, 1846, and made her religious profession at the hands of Bishop Wiseman, afterwards the celebrated Cardinal. In the movement for succouring the British troops in the Crimea Bishop Grant enlisted the aid of the Bermondsey Sisters, and several of them, including Sister Stanilaus, embarked on October 15, 1854, for France, through which they travelled to Marseilles. She arrived with Miss Nightingale at Scutari, the day before Inkerman, when already the hospitals ;were choked with wounded and diseasestricken soldiers. Sister Stanislaus remembers a touching episode when the chaplain read in each ward a letter from Queen Victoria to the Secretary for War: “I wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell those poor noble wounded and sick men that no one takes a warmor interest or feels for their sufferings, or admires their courage and heroism more than their Queen. Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops. So does the Prince.” She often stood guard over a dying soldier. There were no chairs. She sat on the mud floor in some of the hospital shanties, and protected her charge from the attacks of rats. Many a melancholy testament did she send home to sorrowing relatives, written by the dim light of an oil lamp. She stayed in the Crimea administering to the sick right up to the end of the war, returning to England in 1856.