Undated Photograph of Patients at the Children’s Free Hospital from
the Linda Neville, Charles Kerr and Neville Family Papers, available
through the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections and
Digital Programs
http://kdl.kyvl.org/images/kukav/61m158/147.jpg
The
children’s hospital in Louisville is the setting for several important
scenes in “The Little Colonel’s
Holidays.” In
Chapter XIV, “Lloyd Makes A Discovery,”
The Little Colonel and the
Walton girls are delivering flowers to
the patients and discover Dot, Molly’s long-lost sister, in one of the
hospital wards.
(Molly was
the orphan girl who lived with the Appletons at the
Cuckoo’s Nest,
Betty’s rural childhood home. The sad
tale of how she came to be an orphan and her subsequent separation
from her sister, Dot, is told in
Chapter VI, “Molly’s
Story.”)
In the next chapter,
XV, “A Happy
Christmas,” Lloyd, Kitty, Allison and Elise deliver 20 decorated
Christmas trees to the children’s hospital, Dot and Molly are at last
reunited and spend Christmas day together in a private room at the
hospital, and Dot dies with her sister at her bedside as the last
Christmas candles flicker out.
|
Mary Lafon |
In 1901, when
“The
Little Colonel’s Holidays.” was published, the
Children’s Free Hospital in Louisville had been caring for sick and
injured children for nine years. Four founders are credited with
making the hospital – the first medical facility in the city to be
dedicated exclusively to the treatment of children – a reality: social
activists Mary Lafon and Hallie Quigley, who both lived near Central
Park; Dr. John A. Larrabee, president of the American Medical
Association’s section on children’s disease and of the Louisville
Hospital College of Medicine; and Dr. Ap Morgan Vance, a pioneer in
both surgery and orthopedics.
The hospital was originally located in a refurbished
town house at the corner of E. Chestnut and Floyd Streets, within
walking distance of Louisville City Hospital and the Louisville
Hospital College of Medicine. It remained in the town house until
1910, when a new building was erected and attached to the house with
an annex.
Eight children, two in wheelchairs and one on crutches, sitting
outside; "Linda Neville's patients on Children's Free
Hospital lawn in
Louisville” from
the
Linda Neville, Charles Kerr, and Neville Family Papers, 1847-1959,
available through the University of Kentucky Libraries Special
Collections and Digital Programs
http://kdl.kyvl.org/images/kukav/61m158/162.jpg
Five-year-old James Radford Duff, or “Little Radford”
as he was affectionately known, was the hospital’s very first patient,
when he was admitted on January 17, 1892. Annie Fellows Johnston’s
description of Micky O’Brady in
Chapter XIV of “The
Little Colonel’s Holidays” bears some resemblance to Little Radford:
Four little girls, each with her arms full of great red roses, with
leafy stems so long that it seemed the whole bush must have been cut
down with them, passed down the room, leaving one at each pillow.
"My
Aunt Elise sent them," said the
smallest child, pausing at the first white bed. "She asked us to
bring them 'cause she couldn't come herself. They're American
Beauties and they always make me think of my Aunt Elise."
"She must be a dandy, then," was the response of Micky O'Brady, on
whom she bestowed one, taking it up awkwardly in his left hand. His
right one was still in a sling, and one leg had just been taken out
of a plaster cast, for he had been run over by a heavy truck, and
narrowly escaped being made a cripple for life. Elise stopped to
question him about his accident, and found that despite his crippled
leg a pair of skates was what he wished for above all things.
“Kosair Children’s Hospital: A History 1892-1992,”
pages 12-14, provides the following description of Little Radford’s
medical ordeal:
…The child was from Big Stone Gap, a Virginia village high in the
mountains on the southeastern Kentucky border. Doctors there had
pronounced him a ‘hopeless cripple,’ a frightening verdict. In
Little Radford’s hometown, disabled children were alternately
coddled and despised.
Already suffering from tuberculosis, he had been jumping on a
mattress at Duff House, his parents’ inn, when a bedspring gave way.
He had damaged his hip….
…On
January 27, ..Vance…properly set the damaged hip and leg, bracing
them in a cast. Then the child was released to the watchful, loving,
no-nonsense care of Miss Bridgers (a young nurse at the hospital),
who was told to keep him absolutely still. There were no powerful
antibiotics in 1892. The hope was that the tubercular infection
would die down.
It
seemed to work. Six months later, suntanned and walking, Radford
went home for vacation from the hospital, warned to use his crutch.
It was imperative that no weight be put on the hip. Released to the
mountain summer…, the child happily ran and played. By the time the
vacation was over, the tuberculosis in his hip had flared
dangerously.
…Vance frowned when he saw him and scheduled full surgery…Then he
put Radford’s leg in a cast.
The
slow process of recovery began. The child was not allowed to get out
of bed for six months. Throughout the spring and most of the summer,
the nurses wheeled him out into the sunshine and fresh air of the
backyard. They talked and sang to him, taught him games…
Radford left Children’s Free Hospital in 1894, when he was seven,
cured of tuberculosis and walking.
Children’s Free Hospital relied on volunteers and
gifts for its existence. An all-volunteer hospital circle served as
the administration and public relations staff; recruited volunteers
who comprised 99 percent of the hospital’s work force during its first
27 years of operation; and met monthly to sew the vast quantities of
sheets, towels and diapers the hospital required. Many of the
volunteers came from the
Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church, which Lafon and Quigley both
attended, as well as the Culbertsons
and most likely, the Lawtons, when
they were living at
1511 S. Fourth Street following
General Lawton’s death in the Spanish American War.
Also involved was the recently formed Woman’s Club of
Louisville. While we do not know if Annie Fellows Johnston was ever a
member, a newspaper clipping from a
scrapbook at Louisville Free Public Library shows that she read a
story she wrote called “Ben’s Thunderstorm” at one of their Saturday
morning children’s 'programmes' in 1922.
Annie Fellows Johnston's relationships with people who
were heavily involved with the hospital may have been the dominant
factor in her decision to use it in "The Little Colonel's Holidays."
Louise Culbertson ("Aunt Elise")
was a member of the Woman's Club and also served on the board of the
Children's Free Hospital according to her
obituary published in the September 13, 1938 “Courier-Journal.”
Through her longstanding friendships with Louise Culbertson’s mother,
Annie Craig (Grandmother
McIntyre), and sister,
Mary --”Mamie” Lawton (Mrs. Walton), the author undoubtedly was
kept informed of the hospital's mission and progress. Another personal
friend, Dr. Gavin Fulton, was "one of
the initial supporters of the founding of Children's Hospital" and
"among the first doctors on its staff," according to his obituary,
published in the September 10, 1953 "Courier-Journal." The two became
friends when Dr. Fulton was practicing medicine in Pewee Valley
between 1896 and 1903. Mortuary records show he was the attending
physician for her stepdaughter, Rena Eaves Johnston, when she died of
appendicits in September 1897. In 1900, Annie Fellows Johnston
dedicated "The
Story of Dago" to him (re-released in 1931 as "The Three
Tremonts") and called him the "best of physicians and friends."
The scenes in “The Little Colonel’s Holidays” where
the Walton girls and the Little Colonel bring flowers and Christmas
trees to cheer young patients were common occurrences from the time
Children’s Free Hospital opened its doors, according to “Kosair
Children’s Hospital: A History 1892-1992,” page 15:
Contributions poured in, an unending river of
flowers to brighten the wards, coal, clothing, butter, Easter toys,
Christmas trees, gowns, hemming, watermelons, apples, three rabbits
here, a Thanksgiving dinner there, seashells from the Florida coast,
scrapbooks made by seemingly half the church and temple class
schools in town. The young ladies of Kentucky Home School for girls
made sandwiches.
More than a century later, Children’s Free Hospital
has evolved into
Kosair Children’s Hospital, Kentucky's only free-standing,
full-service pediatric care facility. Care is no longer free and the
staff is no longer volunteer. However, the tradition of donating
decorated Christmas trees has continued through the Children’s
Hospital Foundation’s annual
Festival of Trees & Lights.
Many thanks to Norton Healthcare for sending us a copy
of “Kosair Children’s Hospital: A History 1892-1992.”
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