{"id":858,"date":"2016-11-11T03:05:57","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T03:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/childrens-free-hospital\/"},"modified":"2024-04-19T15:03:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T15:03:31","slug":"childrens-free-hospital","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/childrens-free-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"Childrens Free Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Children\u2019s Free Hospital\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" 
\nUndated Photograph of Patients at the Children\u2019s Free Hospital from the Linda Neville, Charles Kerr and Neville Family Papers, available through the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections and Digital Programshttp:\/\/kdl.kyvl.org\/images\/kukav\/61m158\/147.jpg<\/em><\/p>\n

The children\u2019s hospital in Louisville is the setting for several important scenes in \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Holidays<\/a>.\u201d  In Chapter XIV, \u201cLloyd Makes A Discovery,\u201d The Little Colonel<\/a> and the Walton girls<\/a> are delivering flowers to the patients and discover Dot, Molly\u2019s long-lost sister, in one of the hospital wards.<\/p>\n

(Molly was the orphan girl who lived with the Appletons at the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/a>, Betty\u2019s<\/a> 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, \u201cMolly\u2019s Story.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In the next chapter, XV, \u201cA Happy Christmas,\u201d Lloyd, Kitty, Allison and Elise deliver 20 decorated Christmas trees to the children\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"[Left: Mary Lafon]<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1901, when \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Holidays.\u201d was published, the Children\u2019s Free Hospital in Louisville had been caring for sick and injured children for nine years. Four founders are credited with making the hospital \u2013 the first medical facility in the city to be dedicated exclusively to the treatment of children \u2013 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\u2019s section on children\u2019s disease and of the Louisville Hospital College of Medicine; and Dr. Ap Morgan Vance, a pioneer in both surgery and orthopedics.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nEight children, two in wheelchairs and one on crutches, sitting outside; “Linda Neville’s patients on Children’s FreeHospital lawn in Louisville\u201d 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  <\/em><\/p>\n

Five-year-old James Radford Duff, or \u201cLittle Radford\u201d as he was affectionately known, was the hospital\u2019s very first patient, when he was admitted on January 17, 1892. Annie Fellows Johnston\u2019s description of Micky O\u2019Brady inChapter XIV of \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Holidays\u201d bears some resemblance to Little Radford:<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

“My Aunt Elise<\/a> 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.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 \u201cKosair Children\u2019s Hospital: A History 1892-1992,\u201d pages 12-14, provides the following description of Little Radford\u2019s medical ordeal:<\/p>\n

\u2026The child was from Big Stone Gap, a Virginia village high in the mountains on the southeastern Kentucky border. Doctors there had pronounced him a \u2018hopeless cripple,\u2019 a frightening verdict. In Little Radford\u2019s hometown, disabled children were alternately coddled and despised.<\/em><\/p>\n

Already suffering from tuberculosis, he had been jumping on a mattress at Duff House, his parents\u2019 inn, when a bedspring gave way. He had damaged his hip\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026On January 27, ..Vance\u2026properly 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2026, the child happily ran and played. By the time the vacation was over, the tuberculosis in his hip had flared dangerously.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026Vance frowned when he saw him and scheduled full surgery\u2026Then he put Radford\u2019s leg in a cast.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Radford left Children\u2019s Free Hospital in 1894, when he was seven, cured of tuberculosis and walking.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"[Left: Little boy with crippled leg standing in chair] ; “Linda Neville’s Crippled patient (Dillard Stephens), photographed at the Childrens’ Free Hospital in Louisville (Chestnut Street), Jan., 8, 1923 from the Linda Neville, Charles Kerr, and Neville Family Papers, 1847-1959, available through the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections and Digital Programshttp:\/\/kdl.kyvl.org\/images\/kukav\/61m158\/417.jpg<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s 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\u2019s 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<\/a>, which Lafon and Quigley both attended, as well as the Culbertsons<\/a> and most likely, the Lawtons<\/a>, when they were living at 1511 S. Fourth Street<\/a>  following General Lawton\u2019s death in the Spanish American War.<\/p>\n

Also involved was the recently formed Woman\u2019s Club of Louisville. While we do not know if Annie Fellows Johnston was ever a member, a newspaper clipping from a scrapbook<\/a> at Louisville Free Public Library shows that she read a story she wrote called \u201cBen\u2019s Thunderstorm\u201d at one of their Saturday morning children\u2019s ‘programmes’ in 1922.<\/p>\n

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 obituarypublished in the September 13, 1938 \u201cCourier-Journal.\u201d Through her longstanding friendships with Louise Culbertson\u2019s mother, Annie Craig<\/a> (Grandmother McIntyre), and sister, Mary –\u201dMamie\u201d Lawton<\/a> (Mrs. Walton), the author undoubtedly was kept informed of the hospital’s mission and progress. Another personal friend, Dr. Gavin Fulton<\/a>, 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”<\/a> to him (re-released in 1931 as “The Three Tremonts”) and called him the “best of physicians and friends.”<\/p>\n

The scenes in \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Holidays\u201d where the Walton girls and the Little Colonel bring flowers and Christmas trees to cheer young patients were common occurrences from the time Children\u2019s Free Hospital opened its doors, according to \u201cKosair Children\u2019s Hospital: A History 1892-1992,\u201d page 15:<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

More than a century later, Children\u2019s Free Hospital has evolved into Kosair Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a>, 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\u2019s Hospital Foundation\u2019s annual Festival of Trees & Lights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many thanks to Norton Healthcare for sending us a copy of \u201cKosair Children\u2019s Hospital: A History 1892-1992.\u201d<\/p>\n

Page by Donna Russell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Children\u2019s Free Hospital\u201d   Undated Photograph of Patients at the Children\u2019s Free Hospital from the Linda Neville, Charles Kerr and Neville Family Papers, available through the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections and Digital Programshttp:\/\/kdl.kyvl.org\/images\/kukav\/61m158\/147.jpg The children\u2019s hospital in Louisville is the setting for several important scenes in \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Holidays.\u201d  In Chapter XIV, \u201cLloyd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-858","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/858\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}