World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
In the month of November, 1915, the "American Hostels for Refugees"
were founded by Mrs. Wharton and a group of American friends in
Paris to provide lodgings and a restaurant for the Belgians and
French streaming in from burning villages and bombarded towns. These
people were destitute, starving, helpless and in need of immediate
aid. The work developed into an organization which cares permanently
for over 4,000 refugees, chiefly French from the invaded regions.
A system of household visiting has been organized, and not even
temporary assistance is now given to any refugee whose case has not
been previously investigated. The refugees on arrival are carefully
registered and visited. Assistance is either in the form of money
toward paying rent, of clothing, medical care, tickets for groceries
and coal, tickets for one of the restaurants of the Hostels, or
lodgings in one of the Model Lodging Houses. Over 6,000 refugees have
been provided with employment.
There are six centers for the work. One house has a restaurant where
500 meals a day are served at a charge of 10 centimes a meal, and
an "Ouvroir" where about 50 women are employed under a dressmaker,
with a day-nursery, an infant-school, a library and recreation room.
Another center is a Rest-house for women and children requiring rest
and careful feeding. Young mothers are received here after the birth
of their children, and children whose mothers are in hospital. Sixty
meals a day are served here with a special diet for invalids. Another
center contains a clothing depot, which has distributed nearly 100,000
garments, including suits of strong working clothes for the men placed
in factories; layettes, and boots. In the same building are Dispensary
and Consultation rooms. Twenty to thirty patients are cared for
daily at the Dispensary. Another house contains the Grocery Depot,
and another the office for coal-tickets. An apartment house, and two
other houses have been made into lodging houses. The apartment lets
out rooms at rents varying from 8 to 15 francs a month. One of the
houses contains free furnished lodgings for very poor women with large
families of young children. These three houses have met the need of
cheap sanitary lodgings in place of damp, dirty rooms at high rents,
where sick and well were herded together, often in one filthy bed.
Such is the work of the "American Hostels for Refugees." The present
cost of maintaining all the branches of this well-organized charity is
about five thousand dollars a month.
Mrs. Wharton has also established "American Convalescent Homes for
Refugees." Many refugees come broken in health, with chronic bronchitis
and incipient tuberculosis and even severer maladies. Seventy-one beds
are provided. There is also a house where 30 children, suffering from
tuberculosis of the bone and of the glands are being cared for. Four
thousand dollars a month should be provided at once for this work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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