Cairo's Civil War Ansel, Mary Jane Safford

LE ROY H . FISCHER
was just at the threshold of her celestial career when Mary
Ann Bickerdyke caught her and brought her down to earth.""
Mary was given a tour of the tent-and-shed hospitals by
Mrs. Bickerdyke, who pointed out exactly what needed
doing and emphasized the hard, unglamorous, and often
repulsive labors required to complete the task. After Mary
had recovered from the initial shock, she set aside the inhibitions
and artificialities of social tradition and settled
down to a routine of daily work under the direction of Mrs.
Bickerdyke. The older woman - by then known to all the
patients as "Mother" - spared her the worst of the work,
and did the quantity cooking and the washing of clothing
and bedding. Mary's tasks were lighter and included
changing bed linens, spoon-feeding the very ill, reading
and writing letters for the illiterate or the unable.
work was pleasant only by comparison with Mrs.
for there was no escaping the heat, the cold,
flies, and the overpowering smells. But the two women
wholly co-operative, complementing each other's efand
bringing a commendable degree of cleanliness,
,mtOift hope, and cheer where there had been nothing but
and squalid misery. Mary admired Mrs. Bickerlooked
up to her as an ideal, and tried to imitate her.
services, like those of Mrs. Bickerdyke, were un­
She was a civilian volunteer, like Clara Barton, Helen
and Cornelia Hancock, and was never enrolled in
Army Nursing Corps superintended by Dorothea L.
the occasional opposition of surgeons and officers
of the Cairo hospitals, Mary, like Mother Bicker­
Baker, Cyclone in Calico, 51-52.
Ibid.; Young, Women and the Crisis, 98-99; Mary J. Safford to Frank
Cairo, Ill., Dec. 28, 1866, in New York Historical Society.
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