Here and there in London by James Ewing Ritchie

I am walking along the streets, and in doing so pass a scaffolding where some new buildings are being erected. Suddenly I hear a shriek, and see a small crowd collected. A beery Milesian, ascending a ladder with a hod of mortar, slips and falls on the pavement below. He is a stranger in London, has no friends, no money, scarcely any acquaintance. "What's his name? " we ask. "He ain't got no name," says one of his mates; "we calls him Carroty Bill. " What's to be done? Why, take him to the hospital. The police fetch a stretcher. "Carroty Bill" is raised on it, and a small procession is formed. It swells as it goes along. The idle street population joins. We form one. A medical student is in the rear; he meets a chum, and exclaims exultingly, "They are taking him to our hospital. " The chum turns back, and the door is reached; admittance is easy. Happily, the place is not a Government establishment, and patients are received whilst there is hope. Poor "Carroty Bill," bruised and bleeding, yet stupid with drink, is examined carefully by the attendant surgeons. It is of no use asking him what's the matter; his expressions, never very direct or refined, are now very muddy, and not a little coarse.

A careful diagnosis reveals the extent of the injuries received. All that science can do for him is done. If he is taken as an inmate he will have as good nursing and food, and as skilful care and as unremitting attention, as if he were a prince of royal blood. Wonderful places are these hospitals. If Sawney, subject to an unpleasant sensation on the epidermis, blesses the memory of the good duke who erected on his broad domain convenient posts, let us bless a thousandfold the memory of Rahere, who obtained from Henry I. a piece of waste ground, upon which he built a hospital (now known as St. Bartholomew's) for a master, brethren, and sisters, sick persons, and pregnant women; or of Thomas Guy, son of a lighterman in Horsleydown; but himself a bookseller in Lombard-street after the Great Fire; or of the nameless Prior of Bermondsey, who founded, adjoining the wall of his monastery, a house of alms, now known as St. Thomas's Hospital. Likewise let us thankfully record the gifts of the rich, of whose liberality such hospitals as those of King's, and University, and Westminster, and the London, and St. George's, are the magnificent results.