Letter from Charles Dickens, London, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1852 October 30 : autograph manuscript signed.

Relating details of his visit to the miniature painter Mrs. Brayne [Braine] and discussing a copy of a painting she is making; discussing, at length, his thoughts on the indifference of the girls in the Home "to one another in sickness, and [they] hardly seem to have the least natural tenderness for the sufferer. Now in their own lives outside, they are so very different in this respect - being generally extremely compassionate - that I take this to be somehow or other, our fault in a great measure; and considering the subject further, I am inclined to think that this indifference springs out of our doing too much. What I would propose to try, is, that while Mrs. Morson neglects nothing of her kindness and vigilance to a sick young woman, the very circumstance of there being somebody sick in the house, shall be made to change (as it would in any ordinary house) the regular domestic occupations, and that she shall make Nurses of the whole party, one after another, and let them in regular turns sit by the bedside and tend the girl who is ill. I should greatly wish to try this plan, for there is something shocking (and in any other point of view that I can think of, unaccountable) in their being so remiss in one of the most natural feelings of humanity;" accounting for the money he gave to a woman he recommended to Miss Coutts (see MA 1352.293); thanking her for her letter to Charley; adding, in a postscript, "I think of doing something about the Thames Police, and had some of the Toll takers at Waterloo Bridge at the office yesterday to put some questions to them about their experience of suicide. Their answers were rather curious. Almost all the attempts are by women - a man, quite a rarity."