Page 3 - With Katie Margaret Gillis, Mabou Coal Mines

ISSUE : Issue 38

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1985/1/1

w place." And she said, "Let me out, let me out of this place. I don't want to visit them at all." We used to take them out-- those that had friends--and put them in a room. And if a priest came in, or a minis? ter, we had to stay while they were there. Sometimes they'd just grab them. Oh, it was a lot of care. Nobody knows it but the one that was there. And then I had a cousin working in the kit? chen. She was the cook there. The patients were doing mostly all the laundry in the basement. Those that were good were mostly all doing the work on the asylum. It was very few help we had, but those that had to be on the wards. The women were doing the laundry in the cellar, and the women sometimes helped to cook in the kitchen. And the men were always at the horses and in the barn and the cows. We had nothing to do but supervise. We had enough to watch them coming down the stairs to the meals, and see that they got their meals. (So the asylum was taking care of itself to a certain extent.) Very much. And run? ning very cheaply, too. (Your pay wasn't high.) Yes, and besides, the food was quite, at times, scant enough, I guess. Not with us. I don't know if that comes out, but they were fed the 3 meals, and fish was quite a bit. You know what I mean. (Did the people at the asylum ever get well and go back home?) I never--no. It was a place, too, in that day, dear, where they put people in that had no homes. It was an awful lot of people in those days-- no pension, no nothing--that used to beg, and come from home to home. You know what I mean. And people those days were very, very nice and kind to people that didn't have much in the world. Even if they them? selves didn't have much of the world, they were so good to the poor, that they'd keep them overnight sometimes. (But you feel the sick ones were not getting well?) I don't know of many that ever. (What happened to older people? Who took care of them, usually?) Nobody, dear, those days. Those days, those poor people were probably as well as you and I, but they were in their 70s or 80s, and there was no home. There was no pension. Indeed, indeed, as I say, the people were awful good to keep them if they could at all, at all. But there was an awful lot of people Want The Inside Stort on • intrigue at Government House during the Wentworth years • life aboard a Nova Scotian trading ship in the late 1800s • struggles of the Loyalists to rebuild their shattered lives in the town of Shelburne • how to entertain lavishly or simply with seafood • what to look for when buying or building a home • the little-known lives of Nova Scotia's reptiles and amphibians.. These and many more stories are under cover at the Nova Scotia Government Information Office in Sydney. Come in and browse; we're located at the Cabinet Office, 3rd Floor, Provincial Building, 360 Prince Street. Or phone us at 539-7235. If you spot something you like, we'll be happy to order it for you from the Nova Scotia Government Bookstore in Halifax. A catalogue with complete subject listings is available free upon request. 'Sra' Department of ..''' Government Services (3)

Cape Breton's Magazine