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22 A HOUSE OF MERCY.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
. At A Few This High Days Institution Ga...
of health ., and there is a physician who attends them . In cases of serious illness they are removed to a hospital , because there is not
proper accommodation for them in the Home under such circumstances . Sister A ., however , said that they regretted to send them
from their care , as on their return they generally found to their grief that . morally they had retrograded . The greatest difficulty
seems to be preventing the girls conversing together upon their past lives . All that reminds them of old associations seems to call
up the evil within them . An evil girl amongst the penitents -will often do incalculable mischief , but then on the contrary good
example produces its fruits in almost equal ratio . This particular Penitentiary is a sort of " finishing school . " It
is a place to which girls who have been brought into some degree of order in Refuges are sent . To bring girls into this Home fresh
from the streets or direct from prison would , the Warden assured me , be like bringing poison and death to the penitents . His idea is
that reformation at best amongst these unhappy women is a very long process indeed . It is a -work of time and habit , more than
anything else . He never receives a girl nominally for less than two years : she may , however , stay with him a shorter time , but that
depends upon the girl herself . Hope is an element through which this good man especially works . He and the Sisters always hold
up their future career to the girls as the goal to be striven after , but it can only be attained by faithful fulfilment of present duty .
In course of . time the Warden hopes that they shall be able to establish a Refuge in connexion with the Penitentiary—a Refuge
into which he will be ready to receive the raw material which he and the Sisters will then endeavour to prepare for the higher school
of probation . One thing has been observed in the course of reformation in all cases , almost without any exceptionand this is that
, after about two months from- the time a girl has entered a Refuge she begins to change ; not for the better , but rather for the worse . A
time of trial has arrived . The new life has lost its novelty , and the poor human creature pines for a change . This is a very critical
time . She must be strengthened , encouraged , stimulated . Most probably she conquers her temptation and pursues her course again
calmly : but again and again this trial comes at certain periods of her probation , but generally each conquest renders the
succeeding attacks of the enemy weaker . The prospect of leaving a Refuge and entering a Penitentiary , of change from one class to another ,
from one kind of work to another , all act as salutary incitements to his hands by which he can influence their conductand encourage
, their fainting spirits . I have had further conversation with the Warden regarding the
Penitentiary . When the Warden first entered upon his office , an infirmary and surgery existed in the house . The physician attended ,
but the Sisters dispensed and administered the medicines . The
22 A House Of Mercy.
22 A HOUSE OF MERCY .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1858, page 22, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031858/page/22/
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