Hospital Bags

From The Times, August 31st, 1917.

BAGS FOR THE WOUNDED.

RESPONSE TO LADY SMITH-DORRIEN'S APPEAL.

The response to the appeal which appeared in The Times of Tuesday for Lady Smith-Dorrien's Hospital Bag Fund (headquarters, 26, Pont-street, S.W.1.) has been very satisfactory and gratitude is expressed to the many readers who have sent money and orders.  Owing to the holidays and other causes there was a shortage of 30,000 bags when an extra demand for 10,000 a month, in addition to their usual supply, came from the Assistant-Director of Medical Services in France, bringing the number in arrear up to 40,000.  Promises to meet the greater part of this shortage have been received within the last three days, the number of letters being nearly 3,000.  Many of them contained donations, but most were orders, and all day long Lady Smith-Dorrien and her voluntary helpers have been trying to cope with them.

"People are helping us splendidly," said Lady Smith-Dorrien last evening as she cut up bales of bright chintz in lengths to meet the day's orders, "and if they will only keep it up, we shall be able to meet all the shortages.  The stuff is the big difficulty;  we want it in thousands of yards and it is difficult to get enough and to get it quickly.  Some ladies have been using chintz curtains which they did not require after changing house, washing them first, of course, as everything for the wounded must be scrupulously clean.  Some very big promises have come and every one seems to realize that we are coping with the needs of the wounded on every front."

Amongst, the letters was one from a big firm offering to have a number of bags made; another was an appeal from a lady belonging to a well-known county family to farmers' families and cottagers to help her with work and promising to supply a certain portion of the material; another was from a man whose health and age did not allow him to go to the front and who spent part of his time in munitions work and in what was left of his day wished to make bags.  He is not the only man on Lady Smith-Dorrien's working list.  There is one old gentleman who has already made thousands, cutting them out on the billiard table.  The letters from mothers are always the most moving. Many of them say they know what the men in hospital think of the bags, and send their orders or donations with some little personal touch telling where and when their boys fought and were wounded.

Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien pointed out yesterday that one of the great advantages of the bags was that pay-sheets (the loss of which meant delay in getting pay) were far less frequently lost when the wounded man had a bag for his possessions.  A pattern bag and directions will be sent on application and stamps should if possible be enclosed, as the cost of postage is becoming increasingly heavy.