LIFE AND FORTUNE

Taranaki Daily News, 1 June 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

LIFE AND FORTUNE

VIENNESE WHO LOVED BRITAIN. ■ — . DOCTOR AND HIS NEW PENNIES. . • /.- . ' ' •' ” ’.../'- ’ .... • A well-kept secret has been revealed in. the news of the passing of Dr. Ernest .</ Ofenheim, who was on the staff of rSt. John's Hospital at Lewisham. ■ ’ " Dr. : Ofenheim came to England ’ from Vienna over 30 years ago, and loved Britain so much that he became naturalised. In 1906 he joined the voluntary staff of St. John’s Hospital, which then had only 30 beds, and it is entirely .due // to his interest and generosity thatthe ’ ” hospital is now one of the best equipped of London’s free hospitals, with 100 beds and a Nurses Home. For 25 years he gave his services- i’-.v freely. During the war, when'there. £ was no resident medical officer, he was jv? ready to come at any hour of day and night to the relief of sick and wounded. ’ .-, He gave houses for extensions, cally all the land on which the hospital now stands, and a children’s ward named after his daughter Angela,-who is / also a doctor.'. ■ ' ; • \- • : It was as a children’s doctor that he was perhaps best known, for the stoyy ’Xi of his new pennies spread far and wids. ? He sent bags of them to the hospital ;' ; ’ that, all-his. little patients should -have -a new penny every Sunday. ; ’ These children also owe to him many //; happy hours spent in a sand garden on: /he roof. The boys and girls of the x ' Shaftesbury Society’s Cripple; Parlour will miss him too. ' -i '/ ' ; 5 3 Dr. Ofenheim’s secret gifts to St.' John’s were altogether worth more than ■ £50,000. The; Prince of Givers he might Jag have been called had the world known what he was doing. • ,- O