Among all the woes of this sorrowful world, perhaps none are more touching to consider or record than those endured by helpless, speechless childhood. If early years are well supplied with the appliances of life and culture, the privations, exposures, and tempests of later years may be triumphantly borne; but neglect and misfortune in the morning of life, if not instantly fatal, may so extend their shadows as to sadden and ruin a noble existence. Many causes conspire to afflict childhood. Death robs many a bright-eyed child, in the earliest dawn of its existence, of her whose love and care can never be supplied. Its father may be at that instant on the Indian Ocean, in Asia, or on the Rocky Mountains. Poverty may drive the mother to give the food nature provided for her own infant to that of another; thus, to save herself from starvation, she half starves her child. Some mothers are insane, and some suffer with lingering illness, and are themselves conveyed to hospitals. Add to these the numberless illegitimate births, where shame for past crimes leads to the commission of another for its concealment, and we gain a faint conception of the ills the race encounters at the threshold of its existence. Reflections of this kind, particularly those of wet-nurses, compelled by want of subsistence to neglect their own babes and care for others, led to the founding of the "Nursery and Child's Hospital." And is it not eminently fitting that woman, to whom God in His providence has committed the race, and to whom He has given the finest susceptibilities for its culture, should be the founder and manager of this worthy Institution? Early in 1854 Mrs. Cornelius Du Bois, whose mind had become thoroughly imbued with this subject, undertook to interest her friends and the public in behalf of the infant children of the poor, and so successful were her endeavors, that on the 1st of March, less than a month from the time of beginning, a society was organized, with $10,000 subscribed to commence the enterprise. On the first day of the following May a building was opened in St. Mark's place, which was so soon filled that it was found necessary to add the house adjoining; but, the pressure for room still continuing, a more eligible building was secured on Sixth avenue, where the society carried on its work for two years.

The original intention was to provide a nursery for the infants of laboring women, and others deprived by any cause of their mothers. The design was to provide for healthy children, but unfortunately disease is not slow to march through the tender ranks of childhood, and it soon became apparent that, in order to the successful maintenance of a nursery, a hospital with physicians, nurses, and all needful appliances must be added. Every week the number of applications increased, and the managers soon became convinced that the limits hitherto assigned to their undertaking were not commensurate with the wants of the city, and that their borders must be greatly enlarged.

This could not be done without money. An application to the city authorities finally secured the permanent lease of a lot of land one hundred feet square on Fifty-first street, between Lexington and Third avenues. The Legislature was appealed to in 1855, and again in 1857, and the sum of $10,000 was granted to aid in building. Several public entertainments and many private donations so swelled their building fund that they were permitted, in May, 1858, to complete a fine three-story brick building, at a cost of $28,000. The main building is sixty feet deep, With a front of one hundred and nineteen feet, with two wings of twenty-seven and forty feet, respectively. Up to this period no illegitimate children were admitted, but the large numbers they were compelled to refuse induced a deeper study into the necessities of these most wretched of all infants. The late Isaac Townsend, then one of the governors of the almshouse, was led to the careful consideration of the same subject, and came to the same conclusion, viz., that a foundling hospital should be established in New York.