The Home for Ailing Babies
A groundbreaking former paediatric facility for infant children in Wrockwardine Road, founded by Flora Dugdale — after whom the property is still named over 100 years later — and her husband Walter.
Background
In July 1918, the Dugdales granted the freehold of Cranbrook, and its equipment, to Shropshire County Council so that a nursing home for ailing babies might be established there. While contributing to the operating costs (it gave £300 in the first year), the local authority did not take up the offer fully until July 1920 when it was rechristened the County Home for Ailing Babies. The facility, which initially had capacity for ten infants, took patients from all across Shropshire in its first year, from Whitchurch to Wistanstow and Church Stretton. The building was converted to a home for older children in 1945 and remained in public use until the 1990s.
At The Cutting Edge
The home was designed as an adjunct to the work of Wellington’s existing Child Welfare Centre and initially managed by a committee that included local medical professionals and the ranks of the local great and good. Speaking at its first annual general meeting, Walter Dugdale reflected on the reasons behind the facility’s foundation, dutifully recorded by the Wellington Journal,
“A short time ago there was a conference of experts on the subject in London and one of the principal speakers laid emphasis on the fact that “it has been found that a child has a physiology and a pathology of its own and that the question was not simply one of clinical medicine but one of nutrition depending upon an exact knowledge of feeding and general hygiene”. The Chair continued that ‘it was for the purpose of enforcing these principals that the home at ‘Cranbrook’ was founded, and the promoters had anticipated the deductions the conference referred to”.
The Jewel Fund
In order to convert Cranbrook for purpose, a fundraising appeal was launched. One of the biggest contributors, donating £190 (just over £10, 000 today), was the Children’s Jewel Fund. Active between 1917 and 1920, it was established to help support the rising tide of child welfare centres being established around the country at the time. Utilising the slogan ‘a jewel for a baby’s life’, it relied upon wealthy women sending items of jewellery to the Duchess of Marlborough (who herself gave a £700, 000 necklace) at 175 Bond Street, London. Its founders included the actress Dame Ellen Terry.
Despite gifts of money and equipment (including an open air tent from the Shrewsbury Red Cross) arriving from many sources in 1919, it was reported at the inaugural management committee AGM that ‘there would have been a slight deficit had the accounts not been made to balance through the kindness of a friend’.
To give an idea of some of the expenditure involved in that first year alone, food, books and materials for babies accounted for £247 alone (£13 787 today), while structural alterations to the building cost £285 (over £15 900 in 2019). The total receipts for the year stood at £1078 (£60 000), which included £291 in subscriptions.