Another Grenfell Fire

Fire last week destroyed the famed little Grenfell Hospital at Battle Harbor, village of 80 families at Labrador's southern tip. The Battle Harbor Hospital was the first which Famed Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell built when he started his medical missionary work in Labrador 38 years ago. It contained 30 beds, none occupied last week. The patients had been moved inland for the winter.* Dr. Grenfell was in England at the time, lecturing. He expects to remain there until next March.

The hospital burning was the second fire disaster the Grenfell Mission has suffered in recent years. Three years ago his hospital ship Marabel was gutted as she was leaving Sydney, Nova Scotia (TIME, Sept. 12, 1927).

Last week's fire was in a way fateful to Dr. Grenfell's work. It dramatized the stark necessity of the benefit the International Grenfell Association will produce Lt Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, Friday, Nov. 21. Chief singers will be Rosa Ponselle and Giovanni Martinelli. The opera : Giuseppe Verdi's La forza del destine (The Power of Fate).

*Under the title The Fishermen's Saint (Scribner's, $1), Dr. Grenfell last month published the address he made when inducted in 1929 as Lord Rector of St. Andrews University, Scotland. In it he happily notes: "Two years ago we opened a large, modern, fireproof hospital, built of reinforced concrete and steel" at St. Anthony, Newfoundland. The other four hospitals he conducts in Labrador and Newfoundland are, like the one at Battle Harbor, built of wood.

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