About this collection
From the outbreak of the First World War, fighting raged along the French front lines. Public hospitals were swiftly overwhelmed by the number of casualties. The Red Cross helped set up auxiliary hospitals, sometimes in the most unusual of places. The Banque Suisse et Française (now HSBC Continental Europe) financed the establishment of Hospital 124, housing it in bank premises at 20 bis rue Lafayette, Paris. Helped by donors and Union des Femmes de France (an arm of the French Red Cross) volunteers, this ‘bank hospital’ supported the war effort from 1914 to 1917. This selection of postcards offers a moving testimony as to how the bank helped save lives.
