When an entire town gave its skin to one boy

On 4 July 1894, as Montclair in New Jersey celebrated Independence Day, those firecrackers ignited in a riot of red, white and blue flashes. And at another time, in another place, that may have been where the story of Frederick Griffith came to an abrupt, untimely end, with a few cheerless lines in his local paper detailing his ghastly last moments. But Freddie's doctor had other ideas. When Dr Case rushed to the scene, he feared the boy was a goner. But Freddie was made of sterner stuff. And as he clung to life, an ambitious plan began to form in the medic's mind - a skin-grafting venture on an epic scale. What followed, according to a report in the Gloucester Citizen, was possibly "the strangest contribution made by one set of human beings to another in the whole history of altruism". continue