We also quickly came to realize that
there are certain types of wretchedness from which every private
philanthropy shrinks and which are cared for only in those wards
of the county hospital provided for the wrecks of vicious living
or in the city's isolation hospital for smallpox patients.
I have heard a broken-hearted mother exclaim when her erring
daughter came home at last too broken and diseased to be taken
into the family she had disgraced, "There is no place for her but
the top floor of the County Hospital; they will have to take her
there," and this only after every possible expedient had been
tried or suggested. This aspect of governmental responsibility
was unforgettably borne in upon me during the smallpox epidemic
following the World's Fair, when one of the residents, Mrs.
Kelley, as State Factory Inspector, was much concerned in
discovering and destroying clothing which was being finished in
houses containing unreported cases of smallpox. The deputy most
successful in locating such cases lived at Hull-House during the
epidemic because he did not wish to expose his own family.
Another resident, Miss Lathrop, as a member of the State Board of
Charities, went back and forth to the crowded pest house which
had been hastily constructed on a stretch of prairie west of the
city.
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