Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chandler, Johanna
CHANDLER, JOHANNA (1820–1875), philanthropist, born in 1820, was one of the four children of a Mr. Chandler. She was early left an orphan, and taken to the home of her mother’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pinnock, of St. Pancras parish, London. On the death of Mrs. Pinnock in 1856 her granddaughters resolved to devote themselves to providing a hospital for paralytics. Johanna and her sisters learned to make flowers and light ornaments of Barbadoes rice-shells, strung together with pearl and white glass beads, and produced by this hard labour for two years 2001. Johanna then applied to the public for subscriptions. The lord mayor, A1derman Wire, himself a paralytic sufferer, allowed her to call a meeting at the Mansion House on 2 Nov. 1859, at which he presided, and at which the subscriptions reached 800l. A committee was formed, a house was rented in Queen Square, and was formally opened by May 1860, with the title of the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. The institution flourished, and Miss Chandler raised subscriptions and founded the Samaritan Society, to give aid to outdoor patients; she also founded the home for convalescent women patients at East Finchley. She and her brother devoted most of their time to the work until her death from apoplexy at her house, 43 Albany Street, on 12 Jan. 1875. Her brother Edward Henry, who continued Miss Chandler's work, died unmarried, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, in August 1881.
[Facta non Verba, pp. 101-25 ; London Mirror, 23 Jan. 1876; Christian World, 22 Jan. 1876; private information.]