Will Probably Reach This Number Before Building Is Clear of Influenza.
Baker School’s Good Work
Over 100 Sufferers in This Institution for Negroes Suffering From Malady—Clean From Top to Bottom—Volunteer Service Given.
It is expected that the number of patients admitted to John Marshall emergency hospital will reach the 1,000 mark before the ebb tide of the epidemic leaves the building once more clear of influenza. There are now 246 patients in John Marshall by actual count. Only four new cases were admitted yesterday bringing the total up to 711.
While John Marshall emergency hospital has been a remarkable achievement, the Baker School emergency hospital for colored influenza patient as a wonderful piece of work which has been accomplished solely by the colored people themselves with funds and equipment furnished them for carrying on the activities of the hospital under the supervision of the State and City Health Departments, and of Dr. E.C.L. Miller, director of the John Marshall hospital, and his assistants.
There are over 100 patients now in the Baker emergency hospital, which is in Jackson Ward. More colored people live in Jackson Ward than in any other section of the city. During the high tide of the epidemic it was said that there was crepe on every other door in Jackson Ward. What Baker School lacked to complete its metamorphosis was supplied with the same amazing rapidity which marked the course of events at John Marshall.
Splendid War Work Done By Colored People
Baker is now a well-organized, well-equipped, beautifully managed emergency hospital—and the colored people are doing it all themselves. The people who are in charge are not Northern importations, either, but Virginians, most of them born and reared here in the city. The building is clean from top to bottom, the beds are clean and the patients are clean.
Mary E. Carter, the superintendent, submitted a report to Dr. Miller for last week, which shows the most remarkable continuity of service, even of maids and runners. One attendant had been absent once during the week, and one nurses’ aid had one absence marked up against her name. The other workers had a clean sheet. Six registered nurses have been on duty, seven trained attendants and nine nurses’ aids, besides a full complement of volunteer clerks, runners, maids, orderlies and janitors, and thirty-seven women under trained supervision in the diet kitchen.
The staff of physicians at the Baker emergency hospital is headed by Dr. W. H. Hughes. Associated with him are Drs. J. M. Newman, Bessie Tharps, M. B. Jones, Janie Jones, O. B. H. Bowser. A. A. Tennant, E. S. Roane, H. A. Allen, Water Brown, Q. W. Moone and George W. White. All are well trained physicians, and all are giving volunteer service in the hospital.
“We have had no opportunity before to do for our own people what we have been able to do here,” said one of the medical staff. “It is a service from which we will reap benefits for years to come, for our own people here in the South have never had the confidence in us in the past that they will have in the future, since with funds and equipment furnished us we have been able to show them what we are able to accomplish.”
