Shropshire Routes to Roots

In 1900 Agnes Hunt was working as a district nurse when her mother, a formidable woman, decided she was going to come and live with her daughter. She proposed that they should live at Florence House in Baschurch. Agnes and her close friend Emily Goodford, a fellow nurse, were to move in and set up a convalescent home for crippled children. This was to be an outpost of the Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury. Mrs Hunt was to pay wages and support the home.

On the first of October 1900 they took in their first eight crippled children. This was the beginning of what was to become one of the most famous orthopaedic hospitals in the country.

Unfortunately Florence House was unsuitable, as a home for disabled children because the wards were upstairs. To get around this problem Agnes Hunt decided to erect open air sheds in the grounds. The children were now exposed to fresh air day and night.

Rickets is a metabolic disorder resulting from a lack of vitamin D in the diet. This leads to a lack of mineralisation in the growing skeleton which fails to calcify normally. The weight bearing bones, particularly the legs, become bent and deformed. Vitamin D is present in fresh meat and oily fish as well as green vegetables, but it can also be manufactured by the body in the presence of sunlight. A good diet and lots of fresh air would therefore have cured this condition. This page from Agnes Hunt's treatment book records the treatment for a child suffering from Rickets in 1906. Note that they were placed on an anti rickety diet. This would have included fresh meat and vegetables.