Edmund Blampied elected to the Royal Society of British Artists. Later that year he was asked to prepare some new illustrations for a lavish edition of Peter Pan, the rights to which had been bequeathed by J. M. Barrie to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. The "Blampied Edition of Peter and Wendy" was published in 1939 by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK and by Scribners in the US, and is one of the finest illustrated editions of this book. By the time "Peter and Wendy "was published Blampied had moved from London to Jersey with the intention of settling there.
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia had a population of about 460,000, and recorded 10,507 deaths. Leading causes of death were smallpox, typhoid, and scarlet fever. In the worst month of 1855, 300 children under 12 years old died, primarily of infectious diseases. A Philadelphia physician, Dr. Francis West Lewis, inspired by a visit to the new Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London (founded 1852), enlisted Drs. T. Hewson Bache and R. A .F. Penrose Sr. to found the first children's hospital in North America. On November 23, 1855 the following small advertisement appeared in the "Philadelphia Public Ledger": The Children's Hospital—located on