Source: Bristol Evening Post Date: 10th November 2011
As a major redevelopment and a new life beckons, Gerry Brooke takes a look back at the fascinating history of the General Hospital.
An integral part of Bristol’s Floating Harbour, and looming large over the little boats moored around the Bathurst Basin, the General Hospital is hard to miss. You might have spotted it in the BBC3 drama series, Being Human, where it was used for location shots.
Next summer, however, the building closes for good with patients and services being relocated either to the BRI or to South Bristol’s new community hospital at Hengrove.The General’s closure is going to be a sad day – after all there’s been a hospital here, in Guinea Street, since 1832.
Thankfully, the Grade II listed building in Redcliffe will not be demolished, but redeveloped by the award-winning City & Country Group as upmarket flats and apartments. All being well, with full planning approval in place premonitory building work should start in less than 12 months’ time.
The building we see today – much adapted and enlarged over the years – was constructed in 1858 on the site of an old ironworks. But its early days were not without controversy.In 1831, the very same year as the infamous Queen Square riots, a small group of concerned people, including some Quakers, met to discuss the inadequacy of the city’s medical charities. This was almost a decade before the Great Western Railway connected Bristol with London and many years before the launch of the ss Great Britain.
Medicine and surgery were in their infancy, anaesthetics undiscovered (although there was alcohol and opium) and antiseptics unknown. Nursing skills were primitive and in the hands of the unqualified. Despite the fact that Bristol already had a hospital, by the autumn of 1831 £650 had been collected in subscriptions and £809 in donations. It was not a lot, but enough to get started. Although the Bristol Infirmary (later the BRI) had been treating patients since 1737, it was felt that more provision was badly needed, especially for those living in South Bristol. The new hospital was, just like the old infirmary, to be a charitable institution with no government funding.
After looking around for suitable premises it was decided to use a property in Guinea Street, belonging to a Dr Kentish, a physician working at St Peter’s Hospital and at the Bristol Dispensary.This good doctor, who unfortunately died within a year, had also been responsible for the Vapour Baths on College Green, a venture which he had started.
Bristol’s new hospital, next to Acraman’s Iron Works, occupied a timber yard and warehouse on what was, in essence, a school. This stood, said a brochure, “nearly on a level with Redcliffe Parade (where) the ground slopes… towards the new river (New Cut) into which the gouts and drains empty themselves. Between the river and the premises there is no building to intercept the fresh air which accompanies every influx of the tide”, it added confidently.
It would appear that the hospital with beds for 20/30 patients, occupied buildings at both No 11 and 12, and possibly No 14, Guinea Street. Officers included a president, treasurer, secretary and matron plus three physicians, four surgeons and an apothecary. The physicians and surgeons, elected for a period of ten years, were informed that they could not hold a medical position in any other hospital. And the General’s pupils and apprentices, as was the norm in those days, were expected to pay for their training.
The hospital committee’s chairman, Dr Thomas Stock, was a physician at the much overcrowded St Peter’s Hospital, which stood near St Peter’s Church on what is now Castle Park.The General was to be managed by a Board of Subscribers, with lady members being able to send their female servants to a special ward at a cost of seven shillings a week. The idea of a Dispensary for the poor (“mechanic, labourer or servant”) – those unable to afford a doctor or apothecary- was, however, abandoned.
Right from the start antagonism sprang up between the new hospital and the old established Infirmary (BRI). Traditionally supported by Bristol’s wealthy merchant class, the Infirmary had a strong paternalistic Church of England tradition. The General, by contrast, was strongly non-conformist in outlook and supported by the likes of the Wills (Tobacco) and Robinson (Paper) families. This rivalry continued for 100 years, with the infirmary (BRI) remaining the senior hospital with the best resources, both medical and teaching.
The General’s funding came from local residents who gave a penny a week subscription towards the building and running costs. When fully operational, it had 100 beds and 20 nurses. In the 1850’s, after deciding to take patients from outside the city, it was necessary for the hospital to expand. A grand Italian-style building, opened in 1858, had dockside warehouses at ground level to help augment the hospital’s income. As we shall see next week, City &Country Group, together with their architects, have exciting plans for these solidly built warehouses which run right under the older hospital buildings.
In 1863 two new wings were added to provide medical and maternity wards and a dental department. Fifty year later, just before the outbreak of the First World War, a new southern wing was built overlooking the river. This is where some of the Bristol soldiers injured in the trenches were treated for their war wounds. By now Lloyd George’s controversial National Health Insurance Act was in force. In essence this meant working adults paying in four pence a week each week with their employers adding another three pence and the state another two pence.
In return for this outlay you got free medical attention, including medicines. After the end of the First World War, in 1920, a proposed was made to amalgamate all the Bristol hospitals and other medical charities in the city. Although, discussed at great length, however, this radical, pre NHS idea was quashed. Frustrated tobacco magnate, George Willis, then offered to build a brand new hospital – an amalgamation of the BRI and the General – on a site now occupied by St Monica’s on the Downs.
But the continuing rivalry and bickering between the two hospitals made any agreement impossible. In 1921 a shortage of funds led to both hospitals having to introduce charges – a guinea a week – for most patients. There was no payment, however for medical services. An Almoner was appointed to look into cases and reduce the fees for those who couldn’t afford to pay.
In 1930, a time of great austerity, it was revealed that a third of all patients were unable to pay any contribution at all. By now Frenchay Hospital had opened, but only for orthopaedics and children with TB. The General, in its turn, started researching the causes and treatment of Cardiac disease. But then, in 1939 came the Second World War, and just a year later, after the fall of France, Bristol was firmly in the enemy’s sights. Being so near to the shipyards, the hospital suffered damage from air raids, evidence of which can still be seen today.
In 1948, three years after the end of the war, the General, together with the other Bristol hospitals, became part of the NHS.