Remembering the `Babs' cot

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On July 18 50 years ago a clergyman stood in London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and dedicated ‘in perpetuity’ the ‘Babs’ cot, financed anonymously by racing-driver.’ J G Parry Thomas shortly before his fatal accident in 1927 The money was contributed by readers of The Autocar, sending in donations from infants’ sixpences to industry’s hundreds of pounds. (Who was the little boy in the Babs cot at the time and does he recall the occasion?) Last year I enquired about the cot, but met with rather a bleak response. Eventually the hospital’s PR people found the original entry in an old day-book, but they had no idea in which ward the cot had been. After some persuasion I did manage to get them to put a tiny plaque, reading The Babs Cot’, on one of the ward walls. I hear that a new PR person is much more interested. So perhaps when you see the old racing-car on show, at Pendine or elsewhere, you may feel like sending your equivaler4 of a 1927’s “tanner” to this deserving cause.