The magazine that paid for a children’s hospital in Bexhill

It was a convalescent home with 36 beds for patients from the Queen’s Hospital for Children in Bethnal Green, London. Boys and girls aged between 3 and 14 years could spend time there. The home had been purchased and was partly maintained by the readers of ‘Little Folks’ Magazine

Published by London Cassell & Co between 1871 and 1933, ‘Little Folks’ was a children’s magazine which encouraged readers to donate money for projects that would improve the lives of less fortunate children. The home was demolished in 1975 and the site is now Glynde Court.

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Here’s a sample of what the Little Folks magazine said about the home: “During the summer months there can be no more delightful way of raising money for the Home than by holding bazaars, and giving entertainments in the garden, as long as the weather is in a helpful mood, but during the winter and spring it is, as many of you find, an excellent idea to run magazines and clubs, and I am delighted at the energetic way in which these are conducted. I have in a recent number of LITTLE FOLKS mentioned many which have done good work, and here is an account of some more: Hilda Pilling (Hastings) sent me £1, raised by means of a magazine she edits, and there is a club in connexion with the magazine.

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The members each pay 1d. a month and all try to earn money for the Home by making little things and selling them to their friends. Hilda writes: “We make bundles of spills and sell them for ½d.; we are going to try making paper serviettes and little doyleys, so I hope we shall be able to send up more money next time, though the worst of it is our club has, dwindled down to about 3 members.

I should be so glad if I knew some other girls interested in LITTLE FOLKS Home.” From Naida Webber (Purley) I received £1 1s., collected through a magazine which she runs with some friends; From Kathleen Fordham (London), President, 6s. obtained by the Sunbeam Club; the Pansy Magazine run by May Blew helped towards the 5s. sent by May and her sister Beatrice

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Josephine Ruddle and friends write a magazine and sent me 5s.; Jean Padyhara and Phyllis Hutt run a magazine at school called “ White Heather,” and this is supported by their school friends, one of them, Hilda Sharland, having also written a serial story for it. “The Sunbeam” is the name of Betty and Bunty Bate’s magazine, which made 7s., and Mairanne Russell’s “Happy Holiday Magazine “ collected 4s. Gwen Coles sent 4s. 6d. raised by “The Chestnut Magazine,” which she prints with a hectograph, made by herself. Five of her friends are on the Committee of the magazine, Madeleine and Joan Theiler, Marjorie and Lorna Turner, and Joyce Chapman.

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