The Times/1912/Obituary/Louisa Twining

We regret to announce the death of Miss Louisa Twining, which took place on Wednesday at her residence 68, Lansdowne-road, W.

Miss Twining had devoted the greater part of her life to efforts to secure improvements in the administration of the Poor Laws, and more especially in the direction of alleviating the sufferings if inmates of workhouse infirmaries. She was born in Norfolk-street, Strand, in November, 1820, and her intersects during her earlier years tended towards art, one result of her studies in this direction being her publication, in 1852, of "Symbols and Emblems of Mediæval Christian Art," with drawings of herself, while in 1854 she published "The Types and Figures of the Bible." But some years previously her attention had been called to the condition of the poor in the old parish of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, and in 1853, as the result of a visit to an aged inmate of the Strand Union Workhouse, then situated in Cleveland-street, she saw how much there was that could be done by ladies from outside in improving the conditions prevailing in such institutions, where the care not only of the sick but of thousands of women and children was under the control of masculine boards of guardians, who, as she said could not be supposed to understand all that was required for them.

Those were the days before either lady guardians or trained nursing. The nurses in the workhouses consisted almost exclusively of more or less aged pauper women, drunken and negligent in their habits, obeying or disregarding the doctor's instructions as they felt inclined, leaving the sick almost entirely to themselves, and getting recompense for their "services" by extra diet, a jug of beer, or, for especially unpleasant duties, a glass of gin. The sick were in the same buildings as the healthy, and even the incurables had no special treatment or extra comforts, while the wards in which each were kept were too often unfit for human beings to be put in at all. As for the officials of those days, they were mostly persons appointed on the ground of favour rather than fitness, and as regards the then master and matron of the Strand Workhouse, though Miss Twining found them "tyrannical, passionate, and ignorant," the guardians nevertheless approved of them because they "kept order and were economical." Miss Twining continued her visits to the Strand Workhouse, and afterwards visited St. Giles's, which she found even worse.

In 1855 she published "A Few Words about the Inmates of our Union Workhouses," and in 1857 she contributed to the Social Science Congress in Birmingham a paper on "The Condition of our Workhouses," this being the first occasion on which a public address had been delivered on a subject that was afterwards to attract widespread attention. Miss Twining followed up this paper by a series of letters to the Guardian in 1857, afterwards writing to the President of the Poor Law Board, and also to The Times (which published a letter from her in 1858 on "Nursing in Workhouse Infirmaries"), and she likewise contributed papers at subsequent meetings of the the Social Science Congress. A number of these communications were published in pamphlet form, and one of the earliest results was the organization, in 1859, of a Workhouse Visiting Society, which undertook the systematic visiting not only of most of the workhouses throughout London, but those in many different parts of the country as well.

In March 1861, she was mainly instrumental in bringing about the establishment of a home for workhouse girls sent out to service, so that they might have been a better training and not be obliged, when out of a situation, to return to the doubtful company found in the women's wards of the workhouse. The year after this home was opened Parliament was induced to pass a Bill authorizing boards of guardians to pay for the support of girls in certified homes. The home was kept going by Miss Twining and her friends until 1878, when it was made over to the Association for Befriending Young Servants. Miss Twining also, in 1861, opened a home for destitute incurables, and, in the interests of persons of this class in the workhouses, promoted throughout the country an agitation which, helped forward by other ladies as well, led to something like a systematic reform in the then existing conditions, the work being greatly facilitated by the operations of the workhouse Visiting Society, and also of the Ladies' Diocesan Association, which Miss Twining aided in establishing in 1864. Some disclosures made by a Lancet inquiry in 1865 did much towards furthering the movement generally, and an Act passed in 1867 brought about many of the reforms at which Miss Twining and her co-workers had aimed. Among other things it led to the separation of the union infirmaries from the union workhouses; but it still left the ladies with plenty to do in the way of organizing a system of trained nurses who would take the place of the pauper amateurs referred to above, and also of securing the services of educated and competent ladies as matrons.

Miss Twining applied herself with great energy to the furthering of this branch of the movement and eventually, in 1879, the Workhouse Infirmary Nursing Association was established by Miss Twining, acting in co=operation with Lady Montagu of Beaulieu and Constance Marchioness of Lothian, with a view (1) to raising the standard of public opinion on on the whole question of workhouse nursing, (2) to securing the appointment of trained ladies as matrons in all separate infirmaries, and (3) to training and supplying nurses to workhouse infirmaries in London and the provinces. Miss Twining accepted the post of hon. secretary, subsequently becoming one of the vice-presidents. The training of nurses was carried on by the association until 1900, the number which it had so trained and supplied up to that date being 844. This branch of the work was then discontinued, the main objects in view being considered to have been accomplished; but the operations of the association (from whose title the word "Infirmary" has been omitted of late years) were continued as "a useful link between boards of guardians, the public, and the nursing profession as a whole."

The election of Miss Twining on the Kensington Board of Guardians in 1884 brought her into still closer touch with the work of Poor Law administration. She was not the first lady guardian, Miss Martha Merrington having been elected to the Kensington Board so far back as 1875, while in 1884 a "Society for Promoting the Return of Women as Poor Law Guardians" had already been in existence about two years. But the movement thus initiated was greatly encouraged by Miss Twining's example and influence. She became successively chairman of the executive committee and member of the council of the society, which found in her also its chief financial supporter; and she had the satisfaction of seeing the number of women members on boards of guardians in England and Wales increased to over 1,000. This was the case in the early part of 1904, when the society in question was dissolved, the executive committee being then of the opinion that the work for which it had been called into existence might be "considered accomplished." Miss Twining herself remained a member of the Kensington Board until 1890, when she left Kensington, but she was subsequently for three years a member of the Board of Guardians at Tunbridge Wells.

Although Miss Twining's energies were mainly directed to Poor Law reform, she found time for other philanthropic efforts as well. She recalls the fact, in her "Recollections of Life and Work," that she wrote letters to The Times so far back as 1857, 1859, and 1860 pleading for the opening of Lincoln's Inn-fields to the public in the interests of the juveniles and the poor and weak among the population of that neighbourhood, though that result was not attained until February 23, 1895. Another letter which she contributed to our columns in 1865 brought her £1,332 with which to open a convalescent home for cholera from patients from the East-end of London; and in 1885 she joined in a scheme promoted by Miss Nightingale and Miss Florence Lees (Mrs. Dacro Craven) for sending trained nurses to the homes of the poor, joining the council when the scheme in question was developed into the "Metropolitan and National Association." She was the means, through further letters published in The Times, of securing the appointment of police matrons for police courts and police stations in London in the early eighties while the fact that through her charity began at home it did not end there was shown by the great interest she had taken since 1860 in the Universities Mission to Central Africa. A letter from her on Poor Law reform has appeared in our columns during the present year. In March 1904, she became a president of the Women's Local Government Society, a body founded in 1888 to promote the eligibility of women to elect to and to serve n all local governing bodies.

On November 17, 1904, Miss Twining's completion of her 84th year was celebrated by the presentation to her of an illuminated address in a silver box, in acknowledgment of the "esteem and affection" in which she was held "for too many and varied services" she was rendered to her fellow-citizens. The address, to which there were 286 signatures, detailed the various services rendered by Miss Twining during a period of 50 years in improving the conditions of life in Poor Law institutions, and declared:—"It is not too much to say that you have raised the whole tone and standard of Poor Law administration through the country." It was characteristic of Miss Twining's untiring zeal and energy for the public welfare that, in acknowledging this address, she should sketch what she described as "a great legacy of work" for her hearers to do when she herself could work no longer.

The funeral will be at Kensal-green Cemetery tomorrow at 11.45 a.m., the service being held at St. John's Notting-hill, at 11 a.m.