2-982-135 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Accident at St. George's Hospital: the Holland Ward after the Accident, 1876. From a sketch by Mr. F. Dawtrey Drewitt. A broken water tank caused a flood: 'The great pieces of iron and the water passed through the roof and down through the top of Wright's Ward, and burst through the floor by a still larger hole, bending those rafters of the floor which it did not sweep away at the edges. It then passed through the Holland Ward underneath by a smaller hole...The three women injured...fell with their beds. The shock jammed the door of Wright's Ward, and the nurse could not open it. Some students, headed by Mr.Wilson, the junior house-surgeon, and a missionary clergyman...found another bed slipping off the bent rafters into the hole below, and just succeeded in saving the child, Elizabeth Moore, who was in it, before the bed went over with a crash...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.