Royal Free Hospital Anniversary
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I address you, Gentlemen, I hope, in that phraseology for the last time tonight, because I intend to dispense with so savage and unmeaning a conventionality, and shall commence with what I have to say concerning the great object which has called us together by using the phrase, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Ladies and Gentlemen, then, it happened some years ago, immediately after the close of the great Crimean War, that I was walking in the neighbourhood of Blackheath with a civilian just come home, who had greatly distinguished himself in connexion with that event. The conversation naturally turned on the incidents he had lately witnessed, and my companion remarked that the ground upon which we happened to be standing was sufficiently like the ground on which one of the most memorable of the Crimean battles was fought to give me a very good idea of the field.
‘Put behind every one, even of the least of the furze-bushes on that heath', said he, – ‘put behind every patch of shelter before us which could possibly conceal a crouching human form, – at least one – wounded soldier, and you will have a very clear idea of the field, supposing that soldier dead, as I saw it myself on the morning after the fight.’
‘I suppose’, said I, ‘that the badly wounded men crept behind those bushes when they were struck to get out of fire?’ ‘Well, in part for that reason’, he said, 'but I think only for a very small part, because I have noticed that it became a kind of instinct in a badly wounded man to creep away and crawl behind any little bit of shelter, and crouch, and die alone, like some of the lower animals.’
Gentlemen – Ladies and Gentlemen – that picture impressed my fancy very much at the time, and since then, when I have passed through any of the crowded byways of this vast London, or of any other great town or city, I have hoped within myself that it may not be in peace as it is in war, and that many of the striken among us may not retire to their miserable places of refuge – may not coil themselves up in their wretched places of shelter – and die in the midst of us, untended and alone.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, the most prosperous and best cared for among men and women know full well that whosoever is hit in this great and continuing battle of life, howsoever vast the gap may be that is made, howsoever dear the companion may be that is down, we must close up the ranks, and march on, and fight out the fight. But it happens that the rank and file are many in number, and the chances against them are many and hard, and they necessarily die by thousands, when the captains and standard-bearers only die by ones and twos.
How those privates live, and how they fight, and how they die, are questions of immense moment to the whole social army. If they were not felt so in these later times – if they were not felt honestly and thoroughly to be so – there can be no doubt that our own ranks would contain within themselves the certain elements of swift destruction and dissolution, and that we should need no enemy to ruin us, but our own misdeeds. Accordingly, ladies and gentlemen, and because people in general are, thank God! disposed to be humane, and to do right and to do good, this great capital teems with institutions for the relief of the indigent sick. They are not, it is true, by any means equal in number to the dire need – they are not equal in capacity to the heavy demands made upon them – but they are great institutions, nevertheless, many of them richly endowed, all of them nobly remarkable for the great medical science and skill which is freely placed at their command. Now, as I have to entreat your active interest in behalf of one of these, it may be right that I should try, always without depreciation or the shadow of disparagement of any of the others, to show in what its peculiar claims consist.
Happily for me, ladies and gentlemen, the task is an easy one. The distinguishing character of the Royal Free Hospital is amply expressed in its simple name. It is a free hospital, no recommendation is needed by the suffering creature who seeks admission; no letter from a governor or a subscriber has with difficulty to be hunted out. ‘Look at me, look at me; I am sick, I am poor, I am helpless, I am forlorn.’ Those are the patient's credentials. Is there anybody here – is there anybody anywhere knowing that fact, whose fireside on a bleak winter night would not be the brighter and warmer for the reflection that he had done something towards the maintenance of that hospital which afforded such an easy and accessible refuge? Is there a single court or alley in that great maze of courts and alleys which now intervenes between us and the hospital itself, that does not contain at this moment some pain-worn creature to whom, as we are sitting at these abundant tables, that hospital would be a haven of refuge and a dawn of hope? Yes; but consider how many pain-worn creatures there are within that space – consider how many crowded courts and alleys – consider how much wretchedness, distress, disease, and accident; and yet this hospital, which might be made to prove so extensively serviceable, has this night not quite 100 beds to meet the whole of this demand. Ladies and gentlemen, though its sphere of action is so large, and though the demands upon its resources are so enormous, that its in- and out- patients amounted last year, I think, to no fewer than 30,000, it has at this moment not quite 100 beds.
That is the worst of the case looked steadily in the face. And it is at first sight so disheartening and so dismaying, that I admit it would justify the despondent in saying, ‘This is a hopeless case, beyond our reach’, if it were not for the very encouraging statement that I can set against it. And it is briefly this.
The hospital has for some years past been paying for its unusually commodious premises an annual rental of £200. Now, it occurred to one of its most valuable supporters, a gentleman who is present, and who I am proud to call my friend, a gentleman of great business knowledge, of great influence, of great charity, and of great energy – Mr. George Moore, that by an appeal to the munificence and liberality of the bankers and merchants of the city of London, a sufficient sum might be raised to purchase these premises.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, although this appeal was made at the time of the prevalence of the Lancashire distress, and although many other circumstances combined against success attending such an effort – although the sum of money was so large that it had to be counted not by hundreds, but by thousands of pounds – although in simple numbers it amounted to £6,000, that gentleman's efforts have already produced £4,000, and I most sincerely and earnestly hope that when the results of this night’s proceedings shall be declared by the treasurer, this meeting will be able to regard the hospital as henceforth and for ever saved that annual rent-charge, and as established on its own unencumbered property. The meeting may rest satisfied that the hospital is otherwise unencumbered and free from debt, and consequently this meeting will dissolve with the assurance that every shilling subscribed to the hospital fund will go straight to the advancement of its objects, and to the alleviation of pain and misery.
But the hopefulness of the case, ladies and gentlemen, does not stop here. I have spoken of the hospital being a commodious building. I have made it my business to see that building, and to go over, I believe, every foot of it. It contains at this moment 130 beds, all of which could be filled if the income admitted that extension; and not only this, but it contains ample area, excellent light, cheerful galleries, capable of holding many more beds. And it is to be particularly observed that the more the capabilities of the house are brought into action, the less will be the expense attendant upon them, as the staff and plant would not need to be increased in anything like the proportion of patients; and as the building would not need to be increased at all, it indubitably follows that the larger the number received and relieved, the smaller must be the individual cost.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I were to speak for an hour by the clock – which, happily for you, I have not the slightest intention to do – I should only weaken this strong, plain statement of facts: I could but surround it with flourishes, which, like the writing-master's flourishes, would only obscure the text. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a sad reflection to know that in this densely-crowded city, rife with diseases, and with every casualty that can possibly befall the labouring man, this hospital has only an income sufficient to shelter and relieve 100 in-patients.
This is no case of a Château en Espagne – a castle in the air – a hospital of good intentions that may or may not be built some day of fragments rescued from the infernal pavement. There it stands in solid bricks and mortar. It is as real as the poor suffering creature who lies at your feet at the door-step, as you pass home in the dark. The means of assuaging the suffering is at hand if the public will only supply the requisite funds.
There was never so strong or so hopeful a cause. I believe that there are in this great town hundreds of well-disposed people so struck to the heart by the spectacles which the streets of this great city present, and still more by the dreadful spectacles they hide – they would gladly do anything to set those things right if they knew how. In its extent and degree this is how. Set up and maintain 500 beds, and it is positively certain that five times 5,000 human creatures will have laid their wretched heads upon them to recover or to die, within five years.
Oh! ladies and gentlemen. I cannot but think, in speaking of this hospital today, how little the poor need to be done for them, when all is said and done. I have spoken of beds. When we talk of beds we think of a well-appointed and long-established home – we think of a luxurious room, grown to be an old and dear companion – we think, perhaps, of a number of pretty rooms surrounding it, where we have watched our children sleeping from their cradles upward. The hospital bed is a poor little frame of iron, some four feet wide, in a great bare ward the patients never saw before – a little space not much larger than a grave, in a long perspective of unrest and pain.
But to the body stretched upon that little bed, come the ready hand, the soothing touch, the knowledge that can relieve pain within that suffering body; and to the softened mind within it come, at the best time, the words of the Great Friend of the sick in body, and the sick in spirit, who never raised His hand upon earth except to heal.
Ladies and gentlemen, for His sake remember – for God's sake remember – these are the things that evoke the gratitude of the sick poor; these are the things which do men lasting good – these are the blessings we can bestow upon them, at so little cost to ourselves, and by which, after all, we bridge across that great gulf between their beds and ours as we all tend to that common road on which we must be equal travellers at last. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink, ‘Prosperity to the Royal Free Hospital’.