ABSTRACT
There are eight or nine rooms set apart for the women whose husbands are in the Crimea, and no one would believe the scandalous behaviour which they carry on with impunity. Spirits are very cheap, one shilling and twopence for a bottle of brandy, so called, and they are never without several of these bottles by them. I have often gone to the room where most of the women belonging to the cavalry are, for the purpose of getting some shirts made or washed, and on every occasion I have, with no exception, found them in a state of drunkenness, drinking with a lot of scheming fellows who were hanging about, afraid to join their regiments: some who, in fact, never have been in the Crimea, but who act as hospital orderlies, or servants to the doctors, others going about convalescent. Only the other day a servant to one of the doctors, whom I happen to have known by being on board the same ship which brought me from the Crimea, asked me to his little room; on going there I found a troop-sergeant’s wife drinking hard with two hospital orderlies; so much for the women for whom the good folks at home are collecting money. Another instance I will give, I could go on to fifty. Speaking the other day to a sergeant’s wife of the 1st Royal Dragoons, she told me that she had just lost her husband, which she said it was of no use fretting for. In fact she was very drunk at the time, and wound up by asking me to walk out with her and have a bottle in Scutari. I never was more disgusted in my life; I had seen a good many rough scenes, and thought I had acquired some brass, but this threw me over altogether; I declined her kind invitation and went away. The women of the infantry are ten times worse; they are dancing, singing, and drinking every night with strange men; any one is welcome if he will only pay for a bottle. As a body, believe me, sir, they are a disgrace to the army and their sex; they seem more like a set of devils let loose than the wives of English soldiers who are suffering privations and enduring the hardships of war in an enemy’s country, and doing no discredit to their own native land. Last week there came here twenty Sisters of Mercy, and some matrons from some of the London infirmaries and hospitals. They are indeed angels as well as sisters of mercy, and happy are the wounded who are under their kind care and treatment. No matter what the wound is, they dress it, or rather superintend, for besides the matrons mentioned above there are four men who go round with them and prepare the wounds for their inspection and hot water, and in any bad case they will dress the wound even themselves. They visit the general hospital regularly, and four of the number sit up all night and attend upon all those requiring their aid. These ladies have stores of their own, consisting of wine, bread, porter, arrowroot, sago, flannel, and shirts, and they distribute these comforts with no niggard hand. In fact more recover under their treatment than under the doctors’.
