Infant hospital patients

An illustration of children in a hospital ward, from 'London: a Pilgrimage' by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, 1872. Jerrold describes how Charles Dickens worked for charities, particularly those involved in helping children. 'The authorities in Great Ormond Street will tell anybody who may inquire, how his gallant and righteous spirit - how the warming light of his genius, plays about the cradles where the little ones lie.' Jerrold recalls the 'tremulous tones' in which Dickens would plead 'for the sick and destitute children - conjuring the men at the tables round about him to think of the weeping mothers by the hospital cots; then of their own happy little ones at home; and then of the sick child fretting for lack of healing care and wholesome sustenance. Oratory was never sweeter nor more persuasive than this; and never fell from human lips pleading a holier cause. London does not include within its spacious bound a more touching scene than that of the Hospital for Sick Children; nor a purer charity than that which covers helpless infancy. And so I close our pilgrimage at a sick baby's cot.'