Prowlers, Deleriums, the Pest House Held No Fears

Prowlers, Deliriums, the Pest House Held No Fears

by Helen Myers (Poughkeepsie New Yorker, December 10, 1950)

It was very, very early, and time to make rounds again, one spring morning in 1892. Most of the 30 odd patients of Vassar Hospital's four wards were sleeping. Seventeen-year-old Martha Karnofski, a first-year student and the only nurse on duty, stood fearfully in the doorway of the women's surgical ward with a lighted candle in her hand.

She peered anxiously down the corridor that separated the men's and women's surgical wards. That corridor was dimly lighted at either end with a gas jet that was turned way down. The middle section was a dark cavern, and it was that part that she feared, specifically the area nearest the pharmacy and its silent occupant.

She moved down the corridor just enough to be out of sight of any wakeful patients in the women's ward. Then she gathered her sweeping uniform skirt and stiffly starched petticoat in her free hand, lifted her candle, and ran as fast as she could. Just before she reached the doorway of the men's surgical ward she dropped her skirts and walked in with the dignity befitting a nurse. She didn't want any of the patients to know that she had run past the pharmacy.

Young Martha Karnofski is now Mrs. Robert Ogden, a resident of the Old Ladies' Home. When members of the staff of Vassar Hospital want to know anything about the old days at the hospital they ask Mrs. Ogden or Mrs. Robert C. Workman of 10 Vassar View Road. Mrs. Ogden was graduated in the class of '94, the second at the hospital, and Mrs. Workman a year later. She was then Mary Jane Blass, the first Pine Plains girl to become a trained nurse.

There were just nine student nurses when Mrs. Ogden began training, three in the class of '93 and six in hers. Miss Gertrude Deyo, a graduate of Orange Memorial Hospital in Orange, N.J. was "head nurse" and the only graduate on the staff. There were no interns or orderlies. In fact, the students had never heard of an intern.

Although paying patients who were too ill to be moved to a New York City hospital were occasionally admitted at Vassar, it was a free hospital for Poughkeepsie's poor. There were 40 beds in the four wards. The men's and women's surgical wards were on the first floor, the men's and women's medical wards on the second. The original hospital building is now the west end of the Main building.

Construction of Vassar Brothers Hospital, designed by architect Frederick Clark Withers, began in 1884. The hospital opened in April of 1887. The last surviving part of the original main building was demolished in 1982. Dutchess County Historical Society Collection.

About 100 or 150 feet from the hospital there was a two-room building, "the pest house." Patients with contagious diseases such as scarlet fever, diptheria or typhoid were treated there. The patient used one room and the nurse who was assigned to care for him the other. The two remained alone in the building until the patient recovered or died.

During the first year and a half of Mrs. Ogden's two-year course of training just one student nurse was on duty each night unless some very sick patient required the services of a "floater." Each student was assigned to a month of night duty every three months.

Once every hour she was expected to make the rounds of the entire hospital to make certain that all was well. If a real emergency arose, she could telephone to Dr. Bayley who had a home on the grounds. Otherwise, she was on her own.

In those days, if a patient died after 10pm, he was taken to the pharmacy until morning. Young Martha Karnofski, "Miss Kay" to the hospital staff and the patients, wasn't afraid to be on duty alone at night, although Liv-

ingston's Woods then grew almost to the doors.

She wasn't afraid of prowlers. She wasn't afraid of delirious patients, even of those with delirium tremens. She wasn't afraid of an assignment in the pest house. But during her first months of training, she had a great and unreasoning fear of the dead, and Miss Deyo was determined to break her of that fear.

Someone must have told her how 17-year-old "Miss Kay" ran down the hall past the pharmacy when there was an occupant there at night. One day, Miss Deyo called the girl into the pharmacy and told her she

Vassar Hospital nursing students in their blue gingham blouses with stiffclerical collars. Dutchess County Historical Society Collection.

was going to lock the student there with the very next patient that died. "Miss Kay" would be required to wash the body and prepare it for the undertaker.

Dr. Bayley happened to walk in and hear that conversation and he "put his foot down." He wouldn't permit Miss Deyo to lock the student in the pharmacy but in some way the threat cleared the air. "Miss Kay" was never again afraid of the dead, never again gathered up her skirts to run past the pharmacy door. "I don't think she intended to be cruel," Mrs. Ogden said. "She was just very strict, but strict as she was, we loved her."

"It's hard to put it into words," Mrs. Workman said, "But Dr. Bayley and Miss Deyo were like a father and mother to us. You felt their constant care. They looked after our manners and our morals. They were particular about our training. He was especially particular about our eating habits. He'd check with Miss Deyo to make sure that we were eating as we should, especially if we were eating rare roast beef. If we didn't like it, we had to learn to like it. In winter we had to wear flannels, long drawers, long-sleeved shirts, and flannel petticoats. Every winter, Dr. and Mrs. Bayley took us sleighing in their cutter. They'd take one or two of us at a time until everybody had had a ride. Before we went on such a ride Miss Deyo had to check to make sure we were wearing our long underwear and flannel petticoats. That was one of her duties."

Mrs. Ogden doesn't remember Dr. Bayley's emphasis on rare roast beef, but she does remember that the meals at the hospital were excellent. The cook was Swedish and everything she prepared was delicious. The food must have been good. "Miss Kay" grew two inches while she was in training. One day she told Miss Deyo that she couldn't understand why her uniforms had shrunk when those of the other nurses hadn't. "It isn't your uniforms. It's you," the head nurse told her. "Don't you realize that you're growing?"

The nurses used to have fruit, oatmeal with pure cream, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee for breakfast. The other meals were as abundant except when you were on night duty. Then you were expected to work from 7pm until 6am on perhaps three prunes and a couple of slices of bread. The nurses could make tea if they wanted it, but not coffee since it was believed that the aroma of coffee would disturb the patients.

"But I used to beat them to it," Mrs. Ogden said. "I ate before breakfast. Milk from Dr. Bayley's herd was delivered very early in the morning in big cans. When it came I'd go down and have an elegant time drinking milk and cream."

One night she had a real feast, two ears of corn. She ate it without butter, salt or pepper but corn never tasted better. That was during the last six months of her training when two nurses were on duty every night.

Dr. Bayley had insisted on the two nurses, although Miss Deyo thought one was enough. In the end she had to submit to his superior authority, but she "was very much provoked" and made a new set of rules for the nurses who shared each night's work. She drew a chalk line down the center of each corridor. One nurse was responsible for the two wards west of those lines, the other for those on the east. The two weren't to cross those chalked lines for any reason, and they weren't to talk.

"One night I was working on ward 1, men's surgical," Mrs. Ogden said, "and Althea Mackey was on duty on women's surgical. She came out and whistled to me. Then she put a plate with two ears of corn on a broom and shoved it across the line. My, they tasted good. She's still living in town, in Montgomery Street."

"I've often wondered why we had such skimpy meals at night. No, I don't think it was because Dr. Bayley didn't believe in eating late at night. I doubt if he ever knew about those night meals. He was the most wonderful man I ever met. He'd defend you to the last ditch if you got in trouble—as I did quite often. I was sick for six months while I was in training, sick right at the hospital. He had a greenhouse on the grounds. He used to bring me a spray of flowers every day when he came to see me. I was so grateful I actually cried. I hadn't had many attentions. I don't think many men would have been so thoughtful."

Both Martha Kay and Mary Jane Blass were girls who had to make their own way in the world. "Miss Kay's" parents died when she was 11. Five years later she was living with Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Brown in Mill Street. A young doctor who had recently come from New Paltz, J. Wilson Poucher, boarded with the Browns.

"One day he was sick," Mrs. Ogden said. "I must have done something for him. I know he told Mrs. Brown, 'That girl is going into the hospital

Vassar Hospital's grounds overlooking the Hudson. Dutchess Countv Historical Society Collection. (A visitor in 1891 observed: "A pair of handsome pet peacocks and several fan tail doves strut about the tastefully kept grounds. The place is beautiful for situation, while there is a cool breeze blowing at night, and no din arises from the railroad that runs along at the foot of the hill to disturb the invalids." Daily Eagle: May 26, 1891)

if I have anything to say about it.' He talked and he talked to me. I was scared to death at first, but he calmed me down, and I finally went. I've loved Vassar hospital ever since."

Mary Jane Blass was 16 and the eldest of six children when her father died and she had to go to work. All Pine Plains was shocked when she turned down a job as teacher at a little school on Stissing Mountain, a job that paid five dollars a week. She was expected to pay three dollars of the five dollars for board. Mary Jane would regret turning down such a good job, the wiseacres said.

But Mary Jane didn't. She obtained another as companion to a woman who lived in Pawling. When her employer's husband became very ill she acted as nurse until Samantha Briggs came to Pawling. Miss Briggs was a trained nurse, a member of the first class that graduated at the hospital for New York City's Poor on Blackwell Island and the first trained nurse to work in Pawling. "Some of the Pawling people were quite shocked when they heard that she had given her patient a bath," Mrs. Workman

said. "They didn't think she could be quite nice."

It proved to be a long case, the patient was ill for eight months. During all that time, Miss Briggs was day nurse and Mary Jane Blass was night nurse. And whenever the two talked Miss Briggs urged the girl to enter training.

During her days as an undergraduate, Mrs. Workman said, the girls had separate rooms all over the hospital. Each room was equipped with a washbowl and pitcher, but they all used the same bathroom. That was in the center of the first floor. Each ward had its own bathroom for the patients.

The hospitals first class of nursing students graduated in 1890. /n its annual report of 1903, the hospital noted that its nursing school candidates "must be able to read aloud well, to write legibly and accurately, to understand arithmetic as far as fractions and percent, and to take notes at lectures." The Nursing School closed in 1972. Dutchess County Historical Society Collection.

"We had lots of fun," she said. "Of course, there were no movies then, and there wasn't any particular recreation for us, but we had fun together. We were like sisters. We'd gather in one another's rooms to study and talk. We'd squabble then we'd make it up again. There was a lot of work, and it wasn't an exciting life, but it was a happy one. I do think that every nurse in the school loved her work."

Only two nurses could be off duty at the same time, Mrs. Ogden remem-

bered. If they went to the Opera House, Miss Deyo insisted that they should be accompanied to the hospital door by a uniformed policeman. She insisted on that uniformed policeman if the girls stayed out after 9 pm for any reason.

"Our beaux not enough escort?" she asked. "Beaux? We weren't allowed to have any. I think Miss Deyo would have died on the spot if any of us had had one. I remember there was a.boy of about 19 on ward 1. He was convalescing, up and around. When I went down the corridor he waved to me and I waved back."

"I didn't know that Miss Deyo was right behind me. She called me into the pharmacy—that's where she always took you if anything went wrong and gave me the greatest lecture on flirting."

Mrs. Workman's first private duty case was with a typhoid patient in New Paltz. She was paid the usual rate $16 a week. When she had finished she returned to Pine Plains for a short vacation. Her old friends were still skeptical about her choice of a profession until she told them what she received for her work. Then they were 'overcome.' "Why you're doing even better than the teachers," one of her former critics said. "Apparently you weren't so foolish after all." The girls who had started teaching when she was offered the Stissing Mountain School were making $8 a week.

Both Mrs. Workman and Mrs. Ogden followed their profession for many years, and both finished their working years at the Vassar College infirmary. Mrs. Ogden was there for six years, Mrs. Workman for 10—the last seven as supervisor. Both have been retired for several years.

The training she received at Vassar hospital was quite different from the training the girls receive now, Mrs. Ogden said. They studied, but there was less study than there is now. The emphasis was on bedside nursing, and that emphasis gave you assurance.

"I've been in a good many hospitals," Mrs. Workman said, "and I've never seen patients anywhere, even private patients, receive the care that ours did in Vassar when everything was free. One woman had an operation. She was so ill that she was put in one of the small rooms that were usually used as patient's sitting rooms at the head of each ward. That one woman had the care of three nurses. Then her husband came to the

hospital. With all the free service he had received, he was angry because he has to pay to have a barber come to the hospital and shave him. He thought the nurses should do it. And he shouldn't have been there anyway. He was far from poor. When he died he left $24,000, but not one cent to the hospital. I don't know whether Dr. Bayley ever did anything about it or not. Yes, the man was doing a neat chisel. There are people like that anywhere when things are free."

(Helen Myers' work is reprinted by permission of the Poughkeepsie Journal.)