I was to see them
suffer and to learn to respect their gameness, and the wry, "grousing"
humour which is their almost universal trait. In my own wards, and
elsewhere in the hospital, I came in close contact with many cockneys of
the slums. Even when one had not precisely "placed" a patient of this
description, the relatives who came to him on visiting days gave the
clue to the stock from which he sprang. The mother was sometimes a
"flower girl"; the sweetheart, with a very feathered hat, and hair which
evidently lived in curling pins except on great occasions, probably
worked in a factory. These people, if the patient were confined to bed,
sat beside him and talked in a subdued, throaty whisper. But I have seen
the same sort of patient, well enough to walk about, meet his folks on
visiting afternoons at the hospital gate. There is a crowd at the
hospital gate, passing in and going out; hosts of patients are waiting,
some in wheeled chairs and some seated on the iron fence which fringes
the drive. The reunions which occur at that gate are exceedingly public.
Our East Ender is perhaps accustomed to publicity; his slum does not
conceal its feelings--it quarrels, and makes love, without drawn blinds,
and privacy is not an essential of its ardours.
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