![]() On January 16, Louisa described her conflicting feelings of “amazement and anger to see my father enter the room that evening, having been telegraphed to by order of Mrs. Feel too miserable to care much what becomes of me… They want me to go home but I won’t yet… Dream awfully & wake unrefreshed, think of home & wonder if I am to die here as Mrs. Sharp pain in the side, cough, fever & dizziness… try to talk and keep merry but fail decidedly as day after day goes & I feel no better. Ordered to keep to my room, being threatened with pneumonia. Despite her condition, Ropes also wrote a telegram to be sent to Bronson Alcott, urging him to come to Georgetown and take his critically ill daughter Louisa back home, away from the diseased atmosphere in which she now suffered.Īlcott recorded her view of the dire situation: Unfortunately, their ailment was not the normal variety of pneumonia it was typhoid pneumonia – the major killer of wounded soldiers – with the symptoms of pneumonia and typhoid fever combined. On January 9, 1863, Hannah Ropes wrote in her last letter to her son, briefly mentioning that she and Miss Alcott had “worked together over four dying men and saved all but one… we both took cold… and have pneumonia and have suffered terribly.” Working long hours in frigid and unhealthy conditions took its toll on the nursing staff during the following weeks. #Civil war hospital ship j.k. barnes union full#In they came, some on stretchers, some in men’s arms, some feebly staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be recorded before they carried him away to the dead house.Īll was hurry and confusion the hall was full of these wrecks of humanity, for the most exhausted could not reach a bed till duly ticketed and registered the walls were lined with rows of such as could sit, the floor covered with the more disabled, the steps and doorways filled with helpers and lookers on the sound of many feet and voices made that usually quiet hour as noisy as noon and, in the midst of it all, the matron’s motherly face brought more comfort to many a poor soul, than the cordial draughts she administered, or the cheery words that welcomed all, making of the hospital a home. There they were! “our brave boys,” as the papers justly call them, for cowards could hardly have been so riddled with shot and shell, so torn and shattered, nor have borne suffering for which we have no name with an uncomplaining fortitude, which made one glad to cherish each as a brother. In her book about her nursing experiences, Hospital Sketches, Alcott described the scene as more casualties arrived: The heavy work load of the nurses at the Union Hotel Hospital increased greatly when thousands of wounded soldiers arrived from the Battle of Fredericksburg (December 11-15, 1862), overwhelming the capital’s medical facilities. Alcott was impressed by Matron Ropes and her genuine concern for her patients. These were difficult tasks for a young woman just leaving her family home for the first time. Rushing about she was required to wash, dress and feed the men in her ward. On December 12, 1862, Louisa May Alcott came from Concord, Massachusetts to volunteer as a nurse and was assigned to the Union Hotel Hospital. In October 1862, she wrote, “The poor privates are my special children of the present,” and described “the loss they have experienced in health, in spirits, in weakened faith in man, as well as shattered hope in themselves.” In her published diary and letters, Ropes spoke often of her particular regard for the enlisted man. Stanton, resulting in the arrest of the chief surgeon and steward of the hospital. When the surgeon in charge of the hospital refused to assist in her efforts, she took her complaints to Secretary of War Edwin M. Ropes took steps to improve conditions for the soldiers being cared for there. Ropes was assigned as matron at Union Hotel Hospital in the Washington, DC neighborhood of Georgetown, one of the poorest facilities in the area. ![]()
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