For the first time since the 1930s, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity is reinstating and evolving the Peter Pan League, so that after the event, every nursery, school, group or club participating in Peter Pan Week receives a Peter Pan League certificate and each participant will receive a special Peter Pan League badge.
The original Peter Pan League was set up in 1929, even before the establishment of the National Health Service, when the majority of children under the care of Great Ormond Street Hospital were poor. The League was designed to get children of the middle and upper classes interested in poor, sick children.
It was run by the wives of aristocrats and bankers and it cost one shilling a year to join (sixpence for pets!). Membership benefits included:
-
A Peter Pan league badge
-
Receipt of a quarterly magazine
-
A Peter Pan league certificate
The League was aimed at children aged seven to 14 years old, and would be comparable today (in ethos and culture) to organisations like Girlguiding UK, The Scout Association, Woodcraft Folk, Boys' and Girls' Brigades and other uniformed groups.
League members were issued with a very handsome certificate and a badge, but the principal benefit to subscribers to the League was the magazine, usually sixteen pages in length, and published quarterly. As well as stories, the magazine had features on hobbies, (stamp collecting had a page all to itself), historic events and pets. Non fiction special pieces included real life stories about lifeboatmen, engine drivers, the police and working at the BBC. The prosperity of the inter-War supporters might be gauged by features on photography, how to build your library and ski-ing – all pursuits open only to those with substantial disposable incomes at that time.
The publication constantly urged its readers to send in old toys to the hospital and to hold fundraising events, but there was no encouragement of personal contact between the League members and the patients. Donation boxes in the shape of Nana the dog were sent out to capture spare pocket money, and the donors were thanked warmly in the pages of the Magazine. The venture was a huge success, attracting 7,000 members by 1938, and generating hundreds of pounds annually for the Hospital Rebuilding Appeal.
Alas, the realities of the post-War world meant that the magazine was never to appear again, and the League was wound up in 1948. In its lifetime, it had contributed many thousands of pounds to the running and restoration of the hospital, and had fostered an attachment to Great Ormond Street among the better off and healthier peers of the patients.
