Where Help is Needed
The wounds I might have healed,
The human sorrow and smart!
And yet it was never in my soul
To play so ill a part:
But evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as by want of heart.
THE QUEEN'S HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN.
THESE lines of Tom Hood's, in his Lady’s Dream will surely strike many of our readers as painfully true. In this dear old London of ours the greatest amount of poverty and distress is in districts which are out of sight, and very likely equally much out of our thoUghts. But we will turn our readers’ thoughts to the "wounds" and "human sorrow and smart" that they can help to heal, since we know they do not choose to "play so ill a part" as to neglect the pain and suffering. In a neighbourhood that very few of us know, Hackney Road E. is the Queens' Hospital for Children (it was formerly known as the North-Eastern Hospital for Children).
Since 1867 it has been doing grand work in a district where it is immensely wanted; but now there is an unavoidable deficit in the funds amounting to £5,800 and the appalling possibility of two large wards being closed containing sixty-two beds (nearly half the total number available). If money is not forthcoming there is the terrible prospect of suffering children being absolutely turned away from the doors. This year there have been over 70,000 attendances, an increase of more than 15,000 compared with last year, which shows the ever-growing need of this hospital. Now, if everyone who reads what we have writte were to make up their minds just to do something towards helping - so that poor little sick and suffering children need not be refused help, or be turned back to desolate, dirty and overcrowded homes, where most likely even the bare necessities and decencies of life are absent - they would not suffer remorse in thinking what they might have done if they had only known! There are many ways of collecting money to add to what, we hope, our readers will post off right away to Colonel Lord William Cecil, C.V.O., the Queen's Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Bethnal Green, E.
