The
2H
Hilary 2020
Post
Tel: +(254) 020 3546456 +(254) 020 2585375 +(254) 020 2321616 Mobile: +(254) 0733 615193 +(254) 0722 287248 Email: info@peponischool.org
March 20th
The Headmaster’s Address
A
t the end of January in 1747, the first hospital opened in London specialising in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Lock Hospitals became known throughout the world and the one in London was founded by a William Bromfield. The new Lock Hospital became immensely popular, even though the treatments then available were thoroughly ineffective – you only have to read the Diarist Samuel Pepys’s account of how the removal of a bladder stone occurred to him in his youth. Fortunately for him and us, he survived but a vast number did not. What made things worse was that patients were never readmitted once they’d been discharged!
in Europe, the treatment of people with little or nothing seemed to get worse. However, the news was not all bad – institutions like the Lock Hospital seemed to be trying to help those more unfortunate.
This principle turned out to be a real problem. Some of the female patients had been on the streets and had nowhere to be discharged to - a problem that still exists in a vast number of major cities with homeless patients and people who need extra ongoing care. So the Lock hospital governors opened a new institution for the women in the 1790s, the Lock Asylum for the Reception of Penitent Female Patients, (an awful name!), for women who had received treatment at the Hospital but had no steady life to return to. They were taught needlework and other skills so that they could go ‘into service’ and earn their living. That institution grew, was renamed, moved, and grew again, until it eventually became a Military Isolation Hospital during World War II.
The Lock hospital founders seemed to battling with huge problems of their time but they continued and I am confident they help many who could not help themselves. It seems to me that we all have a duty to look after the vulnerable - whoever they are and whatever their vulnerability. As we go through this – our - busy day, and other busy days, may we keep our eyes open for those who need our help – not just the obvious, the dramatic, for the present day orphan and the widow, the stranger and the destitute, who we so often pass by in the street and ignore – but also members of our own community who might need a kind word, or a thoughtful act. If we can act kindly or positively to our neighbours then we are more likely to be more able and willing to help the beggar in the street.
Over the weekend I read a section of a book that looked at medical treatment of people in London throughout the nineteenth century. As the rise of the evangelical movement swept through the United Kingdom, the Americas and some places
The way I see things, if life had been different, we could be the one that needs that help and how grateful would we all be for that small piece of kindness.
So when we read in the Bible that we should care for the orphan and the widow, because God does, we should think of these places of safety, however old fashioned they may seem now. The biblical book of Deuteronomy, says “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.’’ So you too should love the stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
1