Fonds - The Hospital for Sick Children. Ladies Committee fonds

The Ladies Committee was the founding and first governing body of The Hospital for Sick Children. The ladies, primarily Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Anglicans, were concerned about the health and spiritual well-being of children living in the poorest wards of Toronto. They formed a cohesive group ca.1874 under Elizabeth Wyllie McMaster, who urged the establishment of a free hospital for children. Elizabeth McMaster led the Committee, first as Secretary, and later as President.

The Committee rented a small house, at 31 Avenue Street, using an initial donation of a "few English coins,” and opened The Hospital for Sick Children (named in reference to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, England) on March 3, 1875 with 6 iron cots. They held a formal opening ceremony on March 23, 1875, and accepted the first patient on April 3, 1875.

The Ladies Committee operated on the principle that all donations were to be strictly voluntary, no canvassing for funds was to be conducted, and that prayer was to be the mainstay of support for the hospital. To that end, the Committee conducted both business and weekly devotional meetings, sometimes combining the two activities.

In 1878, the Committee approved a Declaration of Incorporation and appointed five men to act as trustees in order to purchase and hold property as a group. In the Declaration, the Committee identified themselves as a society whose purpose was the “care and cure of sick children.” The Declaration named twenty-two ladies who constituted the “original committee,” and stated that the Committee would appoint any successors to the original five trustees.

Despite the introduction of trustees, the Ladies Committee continued to be the governing body of the hospital.

The Ladies extended their work In the 1880s, introducing “out-door” clinics where free medical advice and free medicine was given to sick children whose families could not afford private doctors. In 1883, John Ross Robertson presented the Committee with a convalescent hospital on Toronto Island – The Lakeside Home for Little Children. The Committee undertook to staff the additional building and to supervise its operation. The Ladies Committee accepted a small number of women who wanted to train to become “children’s nurses,” in effect creating a School of Nursing which graduated its first nurse in 1888.

To continue to expand its services, the Committee determined to build a new hospital building, specially designed and adapted for the treatment of children. John Ross Robertson chaired the Building Committee and the Ladies Committee sought his advice on where to build, the hiring of the architects, and the decisions on how to equip the new building.

The building at 67 College Street was completed in 1891 and Elizabeth McMaster, newly returned from the Chicago School of Nursing as a graduate nurse, resigned her position as President of the Ladies Committee in order to become its first Lady Superintendent, although she only served for eight months before resigning due to health concerns.

At this time, the Board of Trustees under the chairmanship of its new member, John Ross Robertson, began to assume more control over the finances of the hospital, especially regarding fund raising. Where the Ladies Committee had preferred to pray for donations, Robertson advocated forceful public appeals utilizing the resources of his newspaper, The Evening Telegram. The Board hired a Secretary/Treasurer, replacing the unpaid members of the Ladies Committee who had filled those roles in the past. These and other changes introduced between 1891 and 1899 gradually resulted in the Board becoming the de facto governing body. Feeling itself becoming redundant, the Ladies Committee dissolved in 1899. Thereafter, the Board of Trustees was the sole governing body of the hospital.

Most of the former Committee members continued their involvement in charitable works, and in 1899, still calling themselves the Ladies Committee, they founded The Home for Incurable Children on Avenue Road – which later evolved into the Bloorview Children's Hospital.