Presbyterian St Lukes Hospital School of Nursing - Alpha Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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nurses is most imperative. The present Home was designed many years ago to provide for the care of forty or fifty nurses. Now there are 150 pupil nurses and about twenty officers and instructors in the Training School, besides about fifty graduates and special nurses. To enable the present directress, Mrs. Macdonald, to keep up the standard of the school, better and larger quarters are essential. As noted in the beginning of this sketch, the hospital was made to meet the need for Christian service. The whole conception was that of a devoted priest of the Church. Dr. Locke was the chaplain until his death, although several others did the active work under his direction. The late Bishop Toll began his ministerial work here ; Rev. George S. Todd was twelve years in residence ; the Reverends W. D. McLean, Percival Mcln- tyre, William Grant, Edward Warren, Char- les T. Susan, Alfred T. Perkins, and others for lesser periods of time. The present chap- lain is completing his twentieth year in resi- dence. Daily chapel and ward services have been maintained for years. The religious influ- ence is certainly one of the most important in the training of the pupil nurses. The min- istrations of the chaplain are welcomed and appreciated not only by the patients, but as well by the doctors and friends interested in them. Until recent years the Social Service work has fallen upon him. Now, through the ef- forts of Miss Susanne Ryerson and the Women ' s Board, the Social Service work has been thoroughly organized including an Oc- cupational School and Kindergarten for pa- tients especially in the children ' s department, engaging the services of four skilled workers under the most efficient direction of Miss Zoe Harpster. This department is co- operating with many other agencies in the city for general assistance of the poor who come under its care. The hospital is indeed a valuable asset to the great work of the Church and her Master. Churchmen cannot afford to see its influence wane or lag for lack of proper equipment. As the project for new buildings has de- veloped, the Bishop and many of the clergy have been at one with the chaplain in the feeling that a prominent feature of the plant should be a chapel building in keeping with the hospital buildings projected. Such seemed also the feeling of the superintendent who, in the very beginning of his planning, asked the chaplain to make a sketch of what he thought desirable. This was done sev- eral years since, the plan composing a com- modious, substantial, churchly chapel, with chaplain ' s quarters, library room, etc., and beneath the chapel, an assembly room for entertainments, gatherings of various sorts, gymnasium purposes, and such like. For this the chaplain has been quietly working during several years. He has not urged the matter because the time did not seem ripe. Much interest has been manifested, some en- couragement given. Although $50,000 or more would be needed for the purpose, suc- cess seems certain. The time is ripe now for an earnest effort. Such a chapel building would be a fitting memorial indeed to some departed friend of the Hospital, especially to Dr. and Mrs. Locke. What building at such a cost woul d serve a more splendid purpose? It would be a very acceptable addition to the many me- morials at St. Luke ' s, of which special men- tion cannot be made in an article like this. Their very mention calls to mind a long list of friends and benefactors whose names must of necessity be omitted here, although worthy of the highest honor for their devotion and self-sacrificing efforts in building up this splendid institution. From the small beginning in 1864, under the inspiration of those devoted people Dr. and Mrs. Locke, both of whom have now en- tered into life eternal, have developed this truly noble institution with its record of good works extending over more than five decades and its brilliant prospects for far more effective services in the years to come.

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WILLIAM J. BRYSON President of Board of Trustees