During the first years of her illness Miss Nightingale still hoped against hope that she might be sufficiently restored to health as to be able to take active steps for the formation of an institute for nurses, and in 1859 it was still thought by the Committee that she would eventually be able to administer the Nightingale Fund, and it agreed to hold the scheme in abeyance. At this time the sum subscribed and the accumulated interest amounted to £48,000. After another year had passed and her health showed no signs of improvement, Miss Nightingale entered into an arrangement by which she placed the money in the hands of trustees for the training of hospital nurses. The net income of the fund amounted to £1,426 and a Council was named to administer it. Miss Nightingale, to whom the fund had been a personal gift from the nation, only reserved to herself the power to give advice. The Hon. Sidney Herbert, shortly to become Lord Herbert of Lea, was the guiding spirit of the Council. It was arranged with Miss Nightingale’s approval to devote two-thirds of the income to the maintenance and instruction of nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital, the probationers engaging to take service in public hospitals and infirmaries. The remaining third was to be spent at King’s College Hospital for the maintenance and instruction of midwifery nurses, the want of whom was at that time much felt in the villages of England. The movement thus begun by Florence Nightingale for the systematic training of lay hospital nurses was first established at old St. Thomas’s Hospital, near London Bridge, in 1860. This hospital was one of the oldest foundations in the country, having been first established in 1213 as an “almery” or hospital in connection with the Priory of Bermondsey. It was later assigned for the use of the poor. At the dissolution of the monasteries St. Thomas’s was surrendered to Henry VIII. It had then forty beds for poor people, a master, six brethren, and three lay sisters. Later it was enlarged and opened as a hospital for the sick poor under the patronage of the young King Edward VI. During the period of the Restoration it was used as a military hospital, and is mentioned in this connection by Pepys in his Diary. In 1732 it was rebuilt and the grand entrance made from Wellington Street, Southwark. It is interesting to find that at this period each ward of the hospital was under the care of a sister and two or three nurses. In selecting St. Thomas’s for the home and training school of her pioneer nurses, Miss Nightingale was carrying on the traditions of the hospital, as nursing sisters had been associated with it from early times. It also specially commended itself to her sympathies as being one of the oldest institutions in the kingdom where the sick poor could be relieved. Later, the hospital was rebuilt in palatial style on its present site on the Thames Embankment, and the Nightingale Training Home became a part of the new hospital.