The text of the Pickwick Paper of 21st May 1997 reads:

"Pickwick was sitting in the Porter's lodge in Corpus Christi's new college, his swollen ankle in a chamber pot full of cold water, whilst Head Porter, John Fynn was extolling the virtues of Addenbrooke's Hospital.

"No matter how good the medicine is there, I reckon you could soon get fed up with the food. I talked to someone who was in a few year's back. You go in on Wednesdays and you get a pint of milk-pottage for breakfast, rice pudding for dinner and two ounces of cheese for supper. They give you rice pudding on Fridays too otherwise its half a pound of boiled mutton or beef for dinner and a pint of milk broth for supper every night - apart from Friday, then you get an ounce of butter. Though I suppose as how that's palatial fare for some of the poor folk that go there.

"We're lucky to have a hospital anyway - and that's all down to an old student of Catharine Hall - just across the road there. He did well for himself, was elected a Fellow in 1704 and practiced medicine from his rooms in the college - but his best act was marrying the Master's niece and going to France for a proper medical education - well Cambridge teaching in those days were not really thought much of. But however much learning he got it didn’t do him a great deal of good because he died when he was 39 yews old - he was practising medicine in Buntingford then.

"They do say he was a odd chap - his maid, Mary Collis said he was into witchcraft - thought he could predict the future by communicating with the dead and all that. Do you know one of the last things he did was to have them burn all his writings in the courtyard of his house, Littlecourt.

"When they read the Will they found he had left over £4,500 to set up a hospital for poor people in Cambridge. That was in 1719 but there was such a to-do about it - there were court cases, and one of the trustees went bankrupt. Anyway it was nearly 50 years before the Hospital was opened and by then the court cases had cost so much there was not enough money left to buy all the beds and other furniture. Then they got an Act of Parliament to set up a proper Corporation to run it. Even then there were problems. The first Treasurer they appointed was a man from St John’s college and he was later suspended from his degree for lending money to students at extortionate rates.

"But in the end Addenbrooke's Hospital - they named it after John Addenbrooke who'd left the money - opened in 1766. It was just a small place thus but they've added to it since. Mind you even that was a struggle - they had to apply to the Court of Chancery for permission to use some money and the court judgement took five years. They got so fed up waiting they said that if they didn’t get permission to make the hospital bigger they would erect a lunatic asylum in the grounds instead. Then they got an architect to draw up designs for the new extensions - local chap - he's Mayor now, name of Charles Humfrey - and that went over budget by more than £1,000 but at least it's open even if you can't get in."

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Page last updated 2nd June 2010