The Queen Elizabeth Hospital : (a unit of the United Birmingham Hospitals).
- Queen Elizabeth Hospital (Birmingham, England)
- Date:
- 1950
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The Queen Elizabeth Hospital : (a unit of the United Birmingham Hospitals). Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![The Hospitals Council thereupon requested the governing bodies of the two hospitals to curtail] their schemes for development, and “‘to meet and consider the outline of ascheme for a new Hospitals Centre”. The invitation was accepted, and a committee was set up which in due course issued a unanimous report (generally known as the Grant Robertson Report, after its Chairman), which recommended that a Hospitals Centre should be established at Edgbaston under the joint control of the General and Queen’s Hospitals, and that the two Hospitals should be amalgamated for all purposes. [he University of Birmingham had long wished to transfer the Medical Faculty from Edmund Street to Edgbaston, and the Centre Scheme, the essence of which was the co-ordination of a group of hospitals with the Medical Faculty of the University, made such a move possible. The Hospitals Centre Scheme having been accepted, an Executive Board was established in 1927, with Sir Charles Grant Robertson as Chairman. The estimated cost of the scheme was one-and-a-quarter million pounds, but it was decided to prepare plans for a first instalment, designed in such a manner that the full scheme could be completed at a later date, at an expenditure of approximately one million pounds. A joint appeal was made and it was agreed that, apart from donations specially allocated, five-sixths of the funds collected should be devoted to the Hospital and the remainder to the University of Birmingham for the erection of a new Medical School. ‘The magnitude of the proposal was fully realised, as well as the immensity of the task of those entrusted with the raising of such a huge sum. There followed three years of preliminary work, the crystallising of ideas, discussion of ways and means, and investigations of the all-important matter of finance. In 1930 a public appeal was launched. The scheme was laid before leading citizens and members of the public at a ‘Town Hall meeting on April roth, 1930, and evoked a speedy and most gratifying response. Contributions were received from all sections of the community, and the fund soon attained an imposing figure. ‘he years 1931 and 1932 were wasted in barren controversy, but after an impartial commission had completely vindicated the Hospitals Centre Scheme, work was begun on the site in peptember, 1933. Eleven months later, on October 23rd, 1934, came tie](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33467432_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
