3922 x 5906 px | 33,2 x 50 cm | 13,1 x 19,7 inches | 300dpi
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Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison was born 16 January 1832 at Hauxwell, a small North Yorkshire village. After a difficult family life, she eventually escaped to devote the rest of her days to nursing, arriving in Walsall on 8 January 1865. It was here that she was to become a legend equal to Florence Nightingale in local eyes. Sister Dora, as she was by then known, had joined the Christ Church Sisterhood, and was sent to work at Walsall’s first tiny hospital in Bridge Street, later at the cottage hospital at The Mount, and in 1876 she found herself in a temporary hospital in Bridgeman Street, overlooking the South Staffordshire Railway (later the London and North Western Railway). Industrial accidents were common in those days, and railway workers especially suffered in Walsall. Many railwaymen required medical treatment, and a great bond of friendship developed between Sister Dora and men from all departments. Their appreciation may easily be measured by their fine gift of a pony and open carriage to Sister Dora one afternoon in June 1873. The railwaymen had raised the princely sum of £50 from their own modest wages to enable Sister Dora to more easily visit housebound patients, and a dozen of her former railway patients turned out in their best off-duty suits to make the presentation. In 1875, Walsall was hit by smallpox, an epidemic hospital being set up in Deadman’s Lane (now Hospital Street), and here Sister Dora worked for six months, risking her own life for the people of Walsall. Later, an infection closed the Cottage Hospital at The Mount, following horrific injuries to workers in a local ironworks explosion. The hospital moved to temporary accommodation rented from the LNWR Railway in Bridgeman Place, overlooking Walsall Station. During 1876, Sister Dora attended 12, 127 patients, a workload which seriously affected her health. In 1877 she contracted breast cancer, and on Christmas Eve in 1878, she passed away. At her funeral on 28 December the town of Walsall
