Norwalk Hospital
| Norwalk Hospital | |
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| Western Connecticut Health Network | |
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 Shown in Connecticut
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| Geography | |
| Location | 34 Maple Street, Norwalk, CT, Connecticut, United States |
| Coordinates | 41°06′43″N 73°25′20″W / 41.112°N 73.4223°WCoordinates: 41°06′43″N 73°25′20″W / 41.112°N 73.4223°W |
| Organization | |
| Hospital type | Teaching |
| Affiliated university | Yale University School of Medicine, New York Medical College School of Medicine |
| Services | |
| Emergency department | Level II |
| Beds | 328 |
| Speciality | Community hospital |
| History | |
| Founded | 1893 |
| Links | |
| Website | www.norwalkhospital.org |
| Lists | Hospitals in Connecticut |
Norwalk Hospital is a not-for-profit, acute care community teaching hospital in the Hospital Hill section of Norwalk, Connecticut. The hospital serves a population of 250,000 in lower Fairfield County, Connecticut. The hospital has more than 500 physicians on its active medical staff, and 2,000 health professionals and support personnel. The hospital is a part of the Western Connecticut Health Network, the regional health system that includes Danbury Hospital, New Milford Hospital and Norwalk Hospital.
In 1888, when a young woman, Margaret Cavanagh, was devastated at the sight of a dying man in the street who had been struck by a train, there was nowhere in Norwalk to bring the gravely ill or injured. The wealthy might be taken to New York or New Haven; ordinary people faced the hazards of horsecar wrecks, factory accidents, childbed fever and pneumonia with no place to turn, in a city without a hospital.
Cavanagh enlisted a passersby that day to carry the rail victim to a makeshift dispensary in the South Norwalk depot before she went on to her job as a hat trimmer. Deeply shocked, she vowed to find some answer for such tragic emergencies. She and other women employees went to foreman John Mains. At Cavanagh's suggestion, a city-wide meeting of hat workers was called, and the movement to establish Norwalk Hospital was born.
After a "hatters' hospital fund" reached $6,000, a temporary community-wide association was organized at a public meeting. Its first fundraiser was a benefit baseball game between married and bachelor physicians, netting $1,052. The drive took on added urgency at the news that even the rudimentary first-aid room at the depot was closing. When a public rally for a hospital convened in October 1891, the Weekly Gazette reported the "monster meeting" filled every seat in the vast armory, with 300 standees as well. The Rev William J. Slocum of St. Mary's led off the pledges, declaring, "We don't want talk so much as we do want money," and the populace caught the spirit. Hat trimmers, with churches and schools, staged a bazaar hospital complex, raising $2,800, and leading citizenry flocked to the cause.
On December 3, 1892, incorporation of The Norwalk Hospital Association was granted by the state. At the first meeting, in the office of Judge John Light, John I. Ferris was elected president.
As temporary quarters, the association leased the second and part of the third floor of a frame house at 24 Leonard Street. On opening day, July 20, 1893, The Norwalk Hour praised the accommodations as "scrupulously clean, with separate wards for men and women, three snow-white beds in each." A converted kitchen served as an operating room and the landlord's son doubled as the first orderly and ambulance driver.
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Wikipedia