'BLUE NUNS' TO EXTEND HOSPITAL

50th anniversary appeal
Catholic Herald Reporter
By Peter Okell
ATHREE-PRONG fund-raising campaign to provide a maternity ward, a new operating theatre, and accommodation for 50 extra beds, is being launched by St. Andrew's Hospital, Dollis Hill, London, which on Tuesday celebrates its 50th birthday.
One of London's best-known independent Catholic hospitals, St. Andrew's, has for the past 27 years been under the care of the Little Company of Mary, an Order of Nursing Sisters founded by London born Mother Mary Potter.
More widely known as "the Blue Nuns" because of the blue veil which they wear symbolising special dedication to the Mother of God, the Sisters are supported entirely by voluntary contributions and patients' payments, yet they have managed to keep constantly abreast of the times.
Since 1930, they have had their own Nurse Training School, with an average of 90 lay and Religious nursing students doing three-year courses before State Registration, and they have increased the number of beds in the last 50 years from 52 to 150, with thousands of acute medical and surgical cases being treated irrespective of nationality, class or creed.
All this has run up a bank overdraft of f93,000, and the proposed new operating theatre, maternity ward and 50 extra beds, will cost another £300,000, but the Reverend Mother, Sister M. Genevieve, is convinced that if the needs are made known the necessary finance will come in.
The extra bed accommodation has to be provided to ensure that the hospital's training school retains recognition under regulations due to be enforced by the General Nursing Council next year.
The final plans have been drawn up, the contracts signed, and very soon now the two old Victorian houses in Oxford Road, Manchester, which contain the Manchester University Catholic Chaplaincy, will fall under the demolition hammers, and from the dust will rise the new Catholic Chaplaincy. Meanwhile, Catholic students have begun the job of preparing a new temporary residence for their Chaplain, Fr. Benjamin Winterborn, over a tailor's shop. a few yards away from the Chaplaincy. In our top picture Kathleen Butler, who is studying general arts, and George Bradley, a physiology student, get down to a spot of painting, watched by the University Chaplain, Father Winterborn, and his assistant, Father George Sandham (with the brush).
During the time the new Chap laincy is being built, weekday Masses will be said in the Church of the Holy Name. Oxford Road, and Sunday services will take place in the students' Union.
The new Chaplaincy will be completed and in use by late 1964. At present there are nearly 1,000 Catholic students at Manchester University and by 1970 this figure is expected to be doubled.