This year Great Ormond
Street Children’s Hospital in London
celebrated its 160th birthday. If you watched the opening ceremony
of the Olympics you may have noticed a little section devoted to it, in which
its child’s-face logo and the letters GOSH were spelled out in light, paying
tribute to this great institution that has been nursing sick children for over
a century-and-a-half.
Victorian cities were no
places for poor children. They were crowded and dirty, and poor neighbourhoods
in particular were prone to outbreaks of disease. Many families struggled to
provide their little ones with basic necessities such as proper clothing or
food, so illness amongst weakly children was rife.
In London this was particularly true, as
Augustus Mayhew noted in his excellent novel ‘Paved with Gold’:
“The streets of London
make, at the best, but a stony-hearted parent, the gutter forming but a
sorry cradle for foundling babes to be reared in. The “back slums” of the
metropolis are poor academies for youth, and moral philosophy is hardly to
be picked up under “dry arches” and in “padding kens.”
So under-privileged children
had a hard time of it in the Victorian city, but what could be done?
An eventual saviour came in
the shape of London-born Charles West. Born in 1816, as a young man Charles had
studied as a physician in Germany and France between 1835 and 1837, and went on
to qualify as a Doctor of Medicines before returning to London and setting up
his own medical practice. This venture, however, was a failure. He left London for Ireland
where he spent some time at Meath Hospital in Dublin,
specializing in gynecology and midwifery.
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| Charles West |
He was made a member of the
Royal College of Physicians in 1842, and so returned to London where he took a post as Chief
Physician at the Waterloo Road Dispensary for Sick and Indigent Children. Two
years later he began teaching midwidery at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and in
1847 started giving lectures on children’s diseases. By now Dr. West had made
up his mind to specialize in the care of children, and attempted to turn the
Waterloo Road Dispensary into a Children’s Hospital. However, all his attempts
met with no success, but he was not to be deterred.
He was made a member of the
Royal College of Physicians in 1842, and so returned to London where he took a post as Chief
Physician at the Waterloo Road Dispensary for Sick and Indigent Children. Two
years later he began teaching midwidery at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and in
1847 started giving lectures on children’s diseases. By now Dr. West had made
up his mind to specialize in the care of children, and attempted to turn the
Waterloo Road Dispensary into a Children’s Hospital. However, all his attempts
met with no success, but he was not to be deterred.
This 1891 article from Strand
Magazine explains what happened next, gives as insight into the history of the
building, and takes us on a guided tour of the Hospital in the 1890’s:
“We want to move Johnny to a place where there are
none but children; a place set up on purpose for sick children; where the good
doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to none but children,
touch none but children, comfort and cure none but children.”
Who does not remember that
chapter in ‘Our Mutual Friend’ in which Charles Dickens described Johnny’s
removal – with his Noah’s Ark
and his noble wooden steed – from the care of poor old Betty to that of the
Hospital for Sick Children in Great
Ormond Street? Johnny is dead – he died after
bequeathing all his dear possessions, the Noah’s Ark, the gallant horse, and
the yellow bird, to his little sick neighbour – and his large hearted creator
is dead too; but the Hospital in Great Ormond Street still exists – in a finer
form than Dickens knew it – and still receives sick children to be comforted
and cured by its gentle nurses and good doctors.
And this is how the very
first hospital for children came to be founded. Some fifty years ago, Dr,
Charles West, a physician extremely interested in children and their ailments,
was walking with a companion along Great
Ormond Street. He stopped opposite the stately old
mansion known as No. 49, which was then “to let.” and said, “There! That is the
future Children’s Hospital. It can be had cheap, I believe, and it is in the
midst of a district teeming with poor.”
The house was known to the
doctor as one with history. It had been the residence of a great and kindly man
– the famous Dr. Richard Mead, Court Physician to Queen Anne and George the
First, and it is described by a chronicler of the time as a “splendidly-fitted
mansion, with spacious gardens looking out into the fields” of St. Pancras.
Another notable tenant of the mansion was the rev. Zachary Macaulay, father of
Lord Macaulay, and a co-worker with Clarkson and Wilberforce for the abolition
of slavery.
Dr. Charles West pushed his
project for turning the house into a hospital for sick children with such
effect that a Provisional Committee was formed, which held its first recorded
meeting on January 30, 1850, under the presidency of the philanthropic banker
Joseph Hoare. As a practical outcome of these and other meetings, the mansion
and grounds were bought, and the necessary alterations were made to adapt them
for their purpose. A “constitution” also was drawn up – which obtains to this
day – and in that it was set down that the object of the Hospital was
threefold:-
(1) The Medical and Surgical
treatment of poor Children;
(2) The Attainment and
Diffusion of Knowledge regarding the Diseases of Children;
(3) The Training of Nurses
for Children
So, in the February of 1852
– exactly nine-and-thirty years ago – the Hospital for Sick Children was
opened, and visitors had displayed to them the curious sight of ailing children
lying contentedly in little cots in the splendid apartments still decorated
with flowing figures and scrolls of beautiful blue on the ceiling, and bright
shepherds and shepherdesses in the panels of the walls – rooms where the beaux
and belles of Queen Anne and King George, in wigs and buckle-shoes, in frills
and furbelows, had been wont to assemble; where the kindly Dr. Mead had
learnedly discussed with his brethren, and where Zachary Macaulay had presided
at many an anti-slavery meeting. It was, indeed, a haunted house that the poor
sick children had been carried into – haunted, however, not by hideous spirits
of darkness and crime, but by gentle memories of Christian charity and
loving-kindness.
For some time poor people
were shy of the new hospital. In the first month only eight cots were occupied
out of the ten provided, and only twenty-four out-patients were treated. The
treatment of these, however, soon told upon the people, and by and by more
little patients were brought to the door of the Hospital than could be
received. the place steadily grew in usefulness and popularity, so that in five
years 1,483 little people occupied its cots, and 39,300 passed through its
out-patient department. But by 1858 the hearts of the founders and managers
misgave them; for funds had fallen so low that it was feared that the doors of
the hospital must be closed. No doubt the anxious and terrible events of the
Crimean War and the Indian mutiny had done much to divert public attention from
the claims of the little folk in 49, Great
Ormond Street, but the general tendency of even
kindly people to run after new things and then to neglect them had done more. It
was then that Charles Dickens stood the true and practical friend of the
Hospital. He was appealed to for the magic help of his pen and his voice. He
wrote about the sick children, and he spoke for them at the annual dinner of
1858 in a speech so potent to move the heart and to untie the purse-strings
that the Hospital managers smiled again; the number of cots was increased to
44, two additional physicians were appointed, and No. 48 was added to No. 49,
Great Ormond Street.
From that date the
institution prospered and grew, till, in 1869, Cromwell House, at the top of
Highgate Hill (of which more anon) was opened as a Convalescent Branch of the
Hospital, and in 1872 the first stone of the present building was laid by the
Princess of Wales, in the spacious garden of Number Forty-Nine. The funds,
however, were insufficient for the completion of the whole place, and until
1889 the Hospital stood with but one wing. Extraordinary efforts were made to
collect money, with the result that last year the new wing was begun on the
site of the two “stately mansions” which had been for years the home of the
Hospital. With all this increase, and the temptation sometimes to borrow rather
than slacken in a good work, the managers have never borrowed nor run into
debt. They have steadily believed in the excellent advice which Mr. Micawber
made a present of to his young friend Copperfield, “Annual income twenty
pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six: result, happiness. Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six: result,
misery”; and, as a consequence, they are annually dependent on the voluntary
contributions of kind-hearted people who are willing to aid them to rescue
ailing little children from “the two grim nurses, poverty and Sickness.” But,
in order to be interested in the work of the Hospital and its little charges,
there is nothing like a personal visit.
One bitterly cold afternoon
a little while before Christmas, we kept an appointment with the courteous
Secretary, and were by him led past the uniformed porter at the great door, and
up the great staircase to the little snuggery of Miss Hicks, the Lady
Superintendent. On our way we had glimpses through glass doors into clean,
bright wards, which gave a first impression at once cheerful and soothing,
heightened by contrast with the heavy black cold that oppressed all life out of
doors. By the Secretary we were transferred to the guidance of Miss Hicks, who
has done more than can here be told for the prosperity of the Hospital and the
completion of the building. She led us again downstairs, to begin our tour of
inspection at the very beginning – at the door of the out-patients department.
That is opened at half-past eight every week-day morning, and in troop crowds
of poor mothers with children of all ages up to twelve – babies in arms and
toddlekins led by the hand. They pass through a kind of turnstile and take
their seats in the order of their arrival on rows of benches in a large waiting
room, provided with a stove, a lavatory, and a drinking fountain, with an
attendant nurse and a woman to sell cheap, wholesome buns baked in the
Hospital; for they may have to wait all the morning before their turn arrives
to go in to the doctor, who sits from nine to twelve seeing and prescribing for
child after child; and, if the matter is very serious, sending the poor thing
on into the Hospital to occupy one of the cosy cots. All the morning this
stream of sad and ailing mothers and children trickles on out of the waiting
room into the presence of the keen-eyed, kindly doctor, out to the window of
the great dispensary (which stretches the whole length of the building) to take
up the medicine ordered, on past a little box on the wall which requests the
mothers to “please spare a penny,” and so out onto the street again.
There are two such
out-patient departments – one at either end of the great building – and there
pass through them in a year between eighteen and nineteen thousand cases, which
leave grateful casual pennies in the little wall-box to the respectable amount
of £100 a year. It does not need much arithmetic to reckon that that means no
less than 24,000 pence.
Leaving that lower region
(which is, of course, deserted when we view it in the afternoon) we re-ascend
to look at the little in-patients. From the first ward we seek to enter we are
admonished by our own senses to turn back. We have barely looked in when the
faint, sweet odour of chloroform hanging in the air, the hiss of the antiseptic
spray machine, and the screens placed round a cot inform us that one of the
surgeons is conducting an operation. The ward is all hushed in silence, for the
children are quick to learn that, when the big, kind-eyed doctor is putting a
little comrade to sleep in order to do some clever thing to him to make him
well, all must be as quiet as mice. There is no more touching evidence of the
trust and faith of childhood than the readiness with which these children yield
themselves to the influence of chloroform, and surrender themselves without a
pang of fear into the careful hands of the doctor.
Sometimes, when an
examination or an operation is over, there is a little flash of resentment, as
in the case of the poor boy who, after having submitted patiently to having his
lungs examined, exclaimed to the doctor, “I’ll tell my mother you’ve been
a-squeezing me!”
We cross to the other side
and enter the ward called after Queen Victoria.
The ward is quiet, for it is one of those set apart for medical cases. Here the
poor mites of patients are almost all lying weak and ill. On the left, not far
from the door, we come upon a pretty and piteous sight. In a cot roofed and
curtained with white, save on one side, lies a flaxen-haired girl – a mere baby
of between two and three – named “Daisy.” Her eyes are open, but she does not
move when we look at her; she only continues to cuddle to her bosom her brush
and comb, from which, the nurse tells us, she resolutely refuses to be parted.
She is ill of some kind of growths in the throat, and on the other side of her
cot stands a bronchial kettle over a spirit lamp, thrusting its long nozzle
through the white curtain of the cot to moisten and mollify the atmosphere
breathed by the little patient. While our artist prepares to make a sketch, we
note that the baby’s eyes are fixed on the vapours from the kettle, which are
curling and writing, hovering and melting over her. What does she think of
them? Do they suggest to her at all, child though she is, the dimness and
evanescence of that human life which she is thus painfully beginning? Does she
wonder what it all means – her illness, the curling vapour, and the people near
her bed? Poor Daisy! There are scores of children like her here, and tens of
thousands out of doors, who suffer thus for the sins of society and the sins of
their parents. It is possible to pity her and them without reserve, for they
have done nothing to bring these sufferings on themselves. Surely, then, their
parents and society owe it to them that all things possible should be done to
set them in the way of health.
And much is certainly one in
this Hospital for Sick Children. We look round the ward – and what we say of
this ward may be understood to apply to all – and note how architectural art
and sanitary and medical skill have done their utmost to make this as perfect a
place as can be contrived for the recovery of health. The ward is large and
lofty, and contains twenty-one cots, half of which are for boys and half for
girls. The walls have been built double, with an air space in the midst, for
the sake of warming and ventilation. The inner face of the walls is made of
glazed bricks of various colours, a pleasant shade of green being the chief.
That not only has an agreeable effect, but also ensures that no infection or
taint can be retained – and, to make that surety doubly sure, the walls are
once a month washed down with disinfectants. Every ward has attached to it, but
completely outside and isolated, a small kitchen, a clothes room, a bath-room,
&c. These are against the several corners of the ward, and combine to form
the towers which run up in the front and back of the building. Every ward also
has a stove with double open fireplace, which serves, not only to warm the room
in the ordinary way, but also to burn, so to say, and carry away the vitiated
air, and, moreover, to send off warm through the iron-work surrounding it fresh
air which comes through openings in the floor from ventilating shafts
communicating with the outer atmosphere. That is what architectural and
sanitary art has done for children.
And what does not medical
and nursing skill do for them? And tender human kindness, which is as
nourishing to the ailing little ones as mother’s milk? It is small reproach
against poor parents to say seldom do their children know real childish
happiness, and cleanliness, and comfort, till they are brought into one of
these wards. It is in itself an invigoration to be gently waited upon and fed
by sweet, comely young nurses, none of whom is allowed to enter fully upon
their duties till she has proved herself fond of children and deft to manage
them. And what a delight it must be to have constantly on your bed wonderful
picture-books, and on the tray that slides along the top rails of your cot the
whole animal creation trooping out of Noah’s Ark, armies of tin soldiers, and
wonderfully woolly dogs with amazing barks concealed in their bowels, or – if
you happen to be a girl – dolls, dressed and undressed, of all sorts and sizes!
And, lastly, what a contrast is all this space, and light, and pure air – which
is never hot and never cold – to the low ceilings and narrow walls, the
stuffiness, and the impurity of the poor little homes fro which the children
come. There, if they are unwell only, they cannot but toss and cry and suffer
on their bed, exasperate their hard-worked mother, and drive their home-coming
father forth to drown his sorrows in the flowing bowl: here they are wrapped
safely in a heavenly calm, ministered to by skilful, tender hands, and spoken
to by soft and kindly voices: so that they wonder, and insensibly are soothed
and cease to suffer. Until he has been in a children’s hospital, no one would
guess how thoughtful, and good-tempered, and contented a sick child can be amid
his strange surroundings.
But we linger too long in
this ward. With a glance at the chubby, convalescent boy, “Martin,” asleep in
his arm-chair before the fire – whom we leave our artist companion to sketch –
we pass upstairs to another medical ward, which promises to be the liveliest of
all; for, as soon as we are ushered through the door, a cheery voice rings out
from somewhere near the stove:-
“Halloa, man! Ha, ha, ha!”
We are instantly led with a laugh to the owner of the
voice, who occupies a cot over against the fire. He is called “Freddy,” and he
is a merry little chap, with dark hair, and bright twinkling eyes – so young
and yet so active that he is tethered by the waist to one of the bars at the
head of his bed lest he should fling himself out upon the floor – so young, and
yet afflicted with so old a couple of ailments. He is being treated for
“chronic asthma and bronchitis.” He is a child of the slums; he is by nature
strong and merry, and – poor little chap! – he has been brought to this pass
merely by a cold steadily and ignorantly neglected. Let us hope that “Freddy”
will be cured, and that he will become a sturdy and useful citizen, and keep
ever bright the memory of his childish experience of hospital care and
tenderness.
Next to “Freddy” is another
kind of boy altogether. He has evidently been the pet of his mother at home,
and he is the pet of the nurses here. He is sitting up in his cot, playing in a
serious, melancholy way with a set of tea-things. He is very pretty. He has
large eyes and a mass of fair curls, and he looks up in a pensive way that
makes the nurses call him “Bubbles,” after Sir John Millais’ well known
picture-poster. He has a knack of saying droll things with an unconscious
seriousness which makes them doubly amusing. He is shy, however, and it is
difficult to engage him in conversation. We try to wake his friendliness by
presenting him with a specimen of a common coin of the realm, but for some time
without effect. For several seconds he will bend his powerful mind to nothing
but the important matter of finding a receptacle for the coin that will be
safe, and that will at the same time constantly exhibit it to his delighted
eye. These conditions being at length fulfilled, he condescends to listen to
our questions.
Does he like being in the
Hospital?
“Yes. But I’m goin’ ‘ome on Kismas Day. My mother’s
comin’ for me.”
We express our pleasure at the news. He looks at us with
his large, pensive eyes, and continues in the same low, slow, pensive tone:-
“Will the doctor let me? Eh? Will he let me? I’ve nearly
finished my medicine. Will I have to finish it all?”
We reluctantly utter the opinion that very likely he will
have to “finish it all” in order to get well enough to go home. And then after
another remark or two we turn away to look at other little patients; but from
afar we can see that the child is still deeply pondering the question.
Presently, we hear his slow, pensive voice call:-
“I say!”
We go to him, and he enquires: “Is Kismas in the shops?
Eh? Is there toys and fings?”
We answer that the shops are simply overflowing with
Christmas delights, and again we retire; but by and by the slow, pensive voice
again calls;
“I say!”
Again we return, and he says: “Will the doctor come to me
on Kismas morning and day ‘Cheer up, Tommy; you’re goin’ ‘ome to-day?’ Will he?
Eh?”
Poor little boy! Though the nurses love him, and though
he loves his nurses, he longs for his mother, and the “Kismas” joys of home.
And though he looks so healthy, and has only turned three years, he has
insipient consumption, and his “Kismas” must be spent either here, or in the
Convalescent Home on the top of Highgate Hill.
It is impossible, and
needless, to go round all the little beds; it is a constant tale of children
innocently and cheerfully bearing the punishment of the neglect, the mistakes,
or the sins of their parents, or of society. Here is a mere baby suffering from
tuberculosis because it has been underfed; there, and there, and there are
children, boys and girls – girls more frequently – afflicted with cholera, or
St. Vitus’ dance, because their weak nerves have been overwrought, either with
a fright at home or in the streets, or with overwork or punishment at school;
and so on, and so on, runs the sad and weary tale. But, before we leave the
ward, let us note one bright and fanciful picture, crowning evidence of the
kindness of the nurses to the children, and even of their womanly delight in
them. Near the cheerful glow of one of the faces of the double-faced stove, in
a fairy-like bassinette – a special gift to the ward – sit “Robin” and
“Carrie,” two babies decked out as an extraordinary treat in gala array of
white frocks and ribbons. These gala dresses, it must be chronicled, are bought
by the nurses’ own money and made in the nurses’ own time for the particular
and Sunday decoration of their little charges. On the other side of the stove
sits Charlie, a pretty little fellow, on his sofa bed.
And so we pass on to the
surgical wards; but it is much the same tale as before. Only here the children
are on the whole older, livelier, and hungrier. We do not wish to harrow the
feelings of our readers, so we shall not take them round the cots to point out
the strange and wonderful operations the surgeons have performed. We shall but
note that the great proportion of these cases are scrofulous of some order or
other – caries, or strumous disease of the bones, or something similar; and,
finally, we shall point out that one little fellow, helpless as a dry twig, but
bold as a lion, at least if his words are to be trusted. He has caries, or
decay, of the backbone. He has been operated upon, and he is compelled to lie
flat on his back always without stirring. He could not have tackled a
black-beetle, and yet one visitors’ day the father of his neighbour having
somehow offended him he threatened to throw him “out o’ winder,” and on another
occasion he made his comrades quake by declaring he would “fetch a big gun, and
shoot every man-jack of ‘em!” But, for all his Bombastes vein, he is a patient
and stoical little chap.
There are here altogether
110 cases in five wards (there will be 200 cots when the new wing is finished)
and a few infectious fever and diphtheria cases in an isolated building in the
grounds; and the cases treated and nursed in the course of the year average
1,000. but the most obstinate cases, we are told, are now sent to Highgate, to
keep company with the convalescents, because of the constant urgency of
receiving new patients into Great
Ormond Street. To the top of Highgate Hill,
therefore, to Cromwell House, we make our way the following afternoon.
- Strand Magazine,
1891
Charles West retired in 1876
at the age of 60, and spent a lot of time in the warmer French climate –
especially in winter. He died in Paris at the
age of eighty-two whilst travelling back to London.
It surprises me that he is
not better known and has no memorial to commemorate his contribution and
dedication to improving the health, and ultimately, the lives of children,
although there is a room at the hospital named after him, and after asking the
Great Ormond Street Hospital charity, they told me that they are “finding out
about memorials.”
Perhaps the greater surprise
is that the names of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole have lived on, with
the former being extremely well-known known and having a museum dedicated to
her (rightly so) whilst a statue of Mary Seacole is due to be erected at St
Thomas’ Hospital. West, however, not only opened Great Ormond Street, but also
wrote a book entitled ‘How to Nurse Sick Children’ in 1854; five years before
Nightingale published ‘Notes on Nursing’ suggesting that he perhaps deserves a
share of Nightingale’s parent of modern nursing tag.
To this day the hospital still relies on public donations collected through its charity in order to raise the £50million that it requires annually to care for sick children. You can read more about this, or donate here and explore more history and photographs of the hospital here.
