The story behind a postcard

Both Floating Hospitals appear together in this postcard, but neither would be named as we know them. The new boat on the left was known then simply as the “Floating Hospital” while the older boat on the right was named the “Robert Fulton.”

Back in the early ’80s—the 1880s that is—one of our doctors would have been a celebrity to everyone who came aboard The Floating Hospital. To the Evening World, he was “one of the Guild’s most earnest workers.” But that wasn’t why he was famous. The paper also reminded its readers that “He was the first doctor to reach Lincoln’s side after Booth’s bullet struck him.”

In order to access the ship in the early days, all passengers were inspected by two doctors—one of our own and one from the Board of Health. They made sure the person standing in front of them matched the physician-signed ticket with the child’s illness indicated; that no child was older than six, unless a “little mother” (an older sister in charge of a younger sibling, with the mother absent); and to make sure no one had a contagious disease.

Like America itself, The Floating Hospital’s 1940s experiences were shaped by the Great Depression being suddenly transformed into a full-on war effort, marked by both expansion and continued deprivation. After the war ended In 1945, a new optimism and economic boom took over, even as a nation mourned its fallen, and not everyone who came home could be made whole again.

It is rare these days to find love stories that have endured for years and even decades. So we were excited to hear about a couple celebrating 44 years of marriage whose romance sparked on our last ship, the Lila Acheson Wallace. The couple, Bruce and Pati Richards, will join us at our annual gala on June 10 at the Edison Ballroom.

One consequence of being an organization more than a century-and-a-half old is a large accumulation of records and documents—including archival photos and letters from dignitaries like Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton—with a responsibility to preserve and maintain them.