Liz Davies
Dr Ernest Harrisson and Doris Miles with the quads.
- Credit: ST NEOTS MUSEUM
At the outbreak of war in autumn 1939, Dr Ernest Harrisson, the doctor who had delivered the St Neots quadruplets, was asked to help out at the new maternity hospital that was being set up at Paxton Park, in Little Paxton.
This grand Georgian mansion, built in the 1750s and then rebuilt in 1784 by Mr Pointer Standly, described in sale particulars of 1878 as ‘A Commodious Mansion’, had been requisitioned as a safe place for expectant mothers to give birth, away from the feared air raids on London.