Annual report of the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital : 1947.

  • Royal Manchester Children's Hospital
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital : 1947. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/90 page 8
    PENDLEBURY 119 YEARS OF SERVICE THE Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital had a very modest beginning, though it is believed to have been the first General Hospital for Children in the British Isles. It was founded in 1829, by several benevolent men, among whom was a physician. Dr. John Alexander, a 30 year old surgeon, Walter Barton Stott, and Daniel Grant, one of the Cheeryble brothers immortalised by Charles Dickens, when a small dispensary was estab¬ lished in Back King Street, Manchester, for the free treatment of sick children. Though resources were strictly limited, the income barely reaching £60 a year, upwards of 1,500 cases were treated annually, without any change of organisation, until the year 1852. In that year a new era in the history of the Institution commenced when a small Hospital, with accommodation for six patients, was established in North Parade for the treatment of urgent cases ; a venture which proved so successful that in 1858 it was decided to transfer the Hospital to Bridge Street, where there was accommoda¬ tion for 25 beds. Ten years later, in 1868, a suitable building was erected in Gartside Street for Out patients, and soon the two establish¬ ments were dealing with 350 In patients and 7,000 Out patients annually. By 1870 the scope and importance of the Hospital was such as to permit of the consideration of still more ambitious plans. This year six acres of land were bought in Pendlebury, on a “ bright and airy hillside,” and the first portion of the present Hospital to be erected was opened in 1873 with 84 beds. There were obvious advantages in selecting Pendlebury as a suitable site, though at the time many disagreed with the proposal to place the Hospital at so great a distance as four miles from the city simply to give patients the benefit of more pleasant surroundings. The completion of the original plans took place in 1878 and, with subsequent extensions, accommodation was thus increased to 180 beds. It is interesting to note, in passing, that after examining the plans about this time, Florence Nightingale thought that the Hospital must be one of the best constructed in Europe.
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