The Annual Report, for year 1893
NORTH EASTERN HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN.
We have received the 26th annual report of this deserving Children’s Charity, which hidden away from the sight of the wealthy, is doing a wonderful work in restoring the sick little ones of the east of London to health and strength.
Last year the inpatients treated numbered 694, while of out-patients there were 16,405 new cases and 55,538 attendances. These numbers, we learn, are larger than those of any previous year owing to the absence of any outbreak of infectious disease sufficiently serious to involve the closing of the wards.
The Ladies’ Samaritan Society has done good work during the year in sending 19 children to convalescent homes, and in paying half the cost of 169 trusses, 109 splints and boots, and 11 other instruments.
The festival dinner, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor, realised £1,203, and £259 was received at Christmas in response to a special appeal. Consequent upon those efforts and also owing to a donation of £700 from Baron Hirsch, the receipts from this source show a large increase over those of 1892, but we regret to learn that the annual subscriptions fell off to the extent of £231, as compared with 1892, and of £71. as compared with 1891.
To meet liabilities the committee had to contract a further loan of £500., bringing the total mortgage on the Hospital up to £4,500. They have been driven to this expedient as the only alternative to curtailing the work of the Institution, but as they truly say in the report "these difficulties cannot, of course, be permanently solved by loans, and the committee hope that the public will this year and in the future come forward with sufficient money to enable them to carry on the great work of the Hospital without having to resort to such expedients."
Of Mr. John Horniman’s munificent bequest of £10,000., a half has been invested to form a permanent endowment of the Hospital, and the remaining half has been invested to form the nucleus of a building fund for the enlargement and completion of the Institution.
The resignation of the late Secretary, Mr. Alfred Nixon (read why here), and the appointment of Mr. H (sic (T.). Glenton-Kerr, as his successor, are chronicled. We ventured at the time of Mr. Kerr’s selection to state our belief that the appointment would tend greatly to the benefit of the Charity, and events since have fully borne out this prediction, for never before do we remember the affairs of this Hospital having been put so prominently before the charitable public as during the past three or four months.
We anticipate and hope for a good year for the Institution in 1894, and confidently look forward to the report for this year as being a far more favourable one, financially, than the one now under notice.