A VICTORIAN CHILD AND THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL (1881)

Abstract

The following description of life in a children's hospital appeared in The Children's Sunday Album, published in London in 1881.1 The wide difference between the rich and the poor child was usually accepted in the Victorian era as part of the Divine order of things. Look at this picture well, you little, bright, happy children, who are well and strong, or even any afflicted like these, and be grateful for the cheerful homes, the loving friends, the comforts which surround you! Good generous people, pitying and loving little children, have sent enough money to support them, and have them taught trades to enable them to lead useful lives, though they are cripples. See how busily at work this big girl is at the end of the form; but her crutches lying beside her tell only too plainly of her misfortune. Bad nursing in their babyhood, joyless unchildlike lives in crowded dirty streets, cause the children of the London poor to be wretched sufferers; and it is a piteous, touching sight to visit the hospitals which have been built for these poor little creatures. Everything is done for them that skill and kindness can do; but it is not like you at home in your beautiful nurseries, with your toys and books, your loving mother, and healthy little brothers and sisters making merry round. In each little bed is some poor, suffering child, tended by kind nurses certainly, but no mothers. Think of this, little ones, when inclined to be fractious and cross, and troublesome, and bless God who has made your lot so bright.