He found this house empty,
its rent a song. He took it, put in half a dozen beds, constituted
himself the physician and his wife the nurse, and opened the
Children's Hospital. Very soon the rooms became wards; the wards
became crowded with children; the one nurse was multiplied by twenty;
the one physician by six. Very soon, too, the physician lay upon his
death-bed, killed by the work. But the Children's Hospital was
founded, and now it stands, not far off, a stately building with one
of its wards--the Heckford Ward--named after the physician who gave
his own life to save the children. When the house ceased to be a
hospital it was taken by a Mr. Dawson, who was the first to start here
a club for the very rough lads. He, too, gave his life for the cause,
for the illness which killed him was due to overwork and neglect.
Devotion and death are therefore associated with this old house.
The fourth large house is now degraded to a common lodging-house. But
it has still its fine old staircase.
The Parish of St. James's, Ratcliff, consists of an irregular patch of
ground having the river on the south, and the Commercial Road, one of
the great arteries of London, on the north. It contains about seven
thousand people, of whom some three thousand are Irish Catholics.
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