CRIMEAN NURSE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1593, 9 November 1912, Page 11

CRIMEAN NURSE.

Sister Mary Stanislaus Joseph, who was Florence Nightingale's right hand throughout tho noblo work of nursing.in the Crimea, has just celebrated her ninetieth birthday' in tho Convent of St. John and St. Elizabeth, at St. John's Wood, London.' In ; sclf-saoriflce and in what proved far more useful—talent for organisation and management—Sister Stanislaus waa ; not a whit behind the noble woman upon whose name has.been showered all the glory of that crusade of tho Crimea. Florence Nightingale herself was never slow to speak.with gratitude.of the devoted band of Catholic Sisters of Mercy who enabled her to crown her great enterprise with success, and until her death, she was a firm friend of the venerable lady who is now spending her declining years in St. John's Wood. Sister Stanislaus is deaf, and her Bight is failing, but her eyes light up when visited by the few intimate friends of her old age. and with them she manages to carry on. a lively conversation. She celebrated • her ninetieth birthday by coming out of her retreat and joining all the sisters at dinner, and there were some speeches by the leading sisteTs in honour of their guest. This gave'tho venerable lady great satisfaction. There are few women who can look back upon a life .so crowded with work of public usefulness as that of Sister Stanislaus.has been. She entered the Convent of the Bermondsey Sisters of Meroy on August 21, 1816, and made her religious profession at the hands of Bishop Wiseman> afterwards tho celebrated Car-. dinal.-Jh the movement for succouring the British troops in the Crimea Bishop Grant enlisted the aid of the Bermondsey Sisters, and several of them, including Sister Stanislaus; embarked on October 15, 1854, for France," through which they travelled-to Marseilles. She arrived 1 with Miss Nightingale at Scutari the day before Inkerman, when already the hospitals were choked'with'wounded and diseasestricken . soldiers.:-Sister Stanislaus remembers . a touching episode when the chaplain "read-in each ward a letter from Queen Victoria to the Secretary for War. "I wish. Miss 'Nightingale and the ladies would tell those poor noble wounded and .sick men that ho one takes a warmer interest.or'feels-for-theirsufferings, or admires.their courago and heroism more than their Queen. . Day, anl night she thinks of beloved troops. So does : the Prince." ' She often' stood guard over a dying soldier. There were no chairs. She sat on the mud.floor in some of.the hospital shanties, .and protected her charge from the attacks of rats.- Many a -melancholy testament did,.she send home to sorrowing relatives', written, by the ■ dim light.of an oil lamp. She stayed in the Crimea administering to the sick- right, up to the end of the war; returning to' England in 1856..- . ■..■"■