THE MEDICAL MEMORIES ROADSHOW
‘To understand where we are today
We have to know where we have come from’
MILL ROAD HOSPITAL
NOW
DEMOLISHED
Like many hospitals across the country, Mill Road hospital grew out of the need to provide workhouses because of the changes made by the New Poor Law of 1834. The West Derby Union was formed as a result in 1837 to oversee the poor of the parishes which stretched from Garston in the south to Ince Blundell in the north. The Guardians of the new Union purchased land in Mill Lane to build the West Derby Union Workhouse.
After inmates from the old Poor House were transferred there and others from Brownlow Hill workhouse moved in under a rental arrangement with the Liverpool Select Vestry, it was soon realised that the new workhouse at Mill Road was too small. All sick inmates were sent to a fever hospital and the fever sheds converted into workshops.
John Birkbeck Nevins was one of the long-standing medical figures at the hospital. A graduate of Guy’s Hospital London University, he practised at Mill Road from 1847 to 1863. He went on to provide a report which was used to put together the Contagious Diseases Act of 1846 and 1866.
The problem of caring for the sick poor was helped when a new hospital was built in 1852 on West Derby Road between Horne Street and Hygeia Street. At that time, nurses were not trained. They were often illiterate and worked on mainly domestic duties. Cases of dismissal for drunkenness or fighting were not uncommon.
By 1862 the issue of looking after the able-bodied poor and the sick poor was becoming a problem. It was decided to purchase thirty-seven acres at Walton-on-the Hill for a new workhouse. The Board of Guardians intended to sell both the hospital at West Derby Road and the Workhouse at Mill Road to pay for the new venture. But once again the need for accommodation had been underestimated and it was realised that the new Walton workhouse would not be big enough. What had been Mill Road Workhouse was kept and became a workhouse hospital for the sick poor.
The decision was not popular with the local residents who had been led to believe that the threat of contagious diseases was to be removed with the transfer of patients. Despite a number of protests, the workhouse hospital at Mill Road remained.
P.W.M.L. Langley was a twenty-three year old Senior Resident House Surgeon who died of typhoid in 1880. He is remembered by a plaque which is now at the New & United Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
Mill Road Hospital was built by the West Derby Union Board of Guardians as a workhouse for the sick poor.
The threat of disease caused by unsanitary conditions together with an inadequate and outdated building, led to the decision to rebuild the workhouse hospital. In March 1891 work started on the Mill Road Infirmary on what had been the site of the workhouse for the sick poor. The cost of the 700-bed building was estimated at £100,000 (just over £6 million at 2002 values). Nurses were relocated at new premises across the road to provide additional space. The last patients were transferred from their temporary accommodation at Belmont Road in 1895.
Mr Nathan Raw was a Medical Superintendent who started in 1896. He went on to serve on national and international committees concerned with tuberculosis and psychiatry. During the First World War he was senior physician of the Liverpool Mobile Base, a mobile unit that followed the troops at the firing line. He pioneered the use of anti-toxins in infective diseases and the use of x-ray diagnosis, finally giving up work due to the effects of irradiation to his hands.
Treatment of the mentally ill was also carried out at Mill Road. The Lower Hospital was a detached block on the Mill Road site and inmates there became knows as ‘lowers’. Often troublesome patients were transferred to the Lower block with little knowledge of their true condition. It was simple procedure requiring no legal obligations
Before the First World War (1914-1918), Mill Road started to take in paying patients and certain parts of the hospital were used just for this purpose. The strain on voluntary hospitals meant that alternative accommodation was needed. This mixed use served an important part in decreasing the divide between the two types of hospital. Despite the change of name, the institution would still be known as the workhouse hospital for many years.
1925 was an important year for the hospital. The General Nursing Council recognised it as a Training School for Nurses a new wing for the departments of Operating, X-Ray and Electro-therapeutics was opened and Neville Chamberlain, the Minister for Health, paid a visit.
Gertrude Riding started work at Mill Road in 1910. She was Matron from 1927 until she retired in 1948. She lost an eye as the result of injuries during the blitz. She was a founding member of the Royal College of Nursing and was awarded the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for her services during the war.
In 1937 Leonard Findlay was appointed as Superintendent. He was a popular figure and with his enthusiasm and direction, and was one of the reasons why Mill Road got a reputation as the best pre-Second World War hospital for post-graduate study in Liverpool. He received the George Medal for bravery during the German air raids on the city in May 1941 (the 'blitz').
It remained a general hospital until the Second World War. The only major addition to the original institution was a new outpatients department which was built in 1938.
Mill Road hospital in Liverpool was busy during the Second World War (1939-1945). For example on 14 September 1939 an accidental explosion at the docks brought in eighty patients and it became obvious that the hospital was under-prepared for casualties of war. Action such as transferring patients to suburban hospitals was taken to ensure that the hospital could cope. Heavy air raids were experienced in Liverpool during March 1941 and continued until the first week in May when the worst attacks of all occurred,
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MILL ROAD OPERATING THEATRE
On 3 May 1941 the hospital itself was hit. Eighty-three people were killed that night including seventeen members of staff. Twenty-seven people (of which seventeen were staff) were injured. The four hundred or so surviving patients were transferred to Broad green Hospital where 610 beds were made available .
Three ward blocks were totally destroyed and the in-patient area was not fit for use Fortunately the new outpatient block was not damaged.
When the war ended there was a debate about whether or not the hospital should be rebuilt. When it did finally reopen in June 1947, it was not as a general hospital but as a specialist maternity hospital.
When the National Health Service was set up 1948 the administration of Mill Road infirmary passed from Liverpool Corporation to the Eastern Hospitals Board. It had not been used at all after the wartime bombing and staff went to work at Walton and later Broadgreen hospitals.
After the war it was decided to salvage and make good what was left of Mill Road and to turn it into a hospital that specialised in obstetrics (child-birth) and gynaecology (problems only affecting women). Mill Road Maternity Unit was opened on 5 June 1947 at the hospital and was one of many maternity hospitals which had to cope with the post-war baby boom and the increase in the number of births.
In 1950 the Obstetrical Flying Unit (later run in partnership with Liverpool Maternity Hospital) was introduced. A squad of specialists could be used to attend difficult home births. Improvements during the mid-1950's included additional isolation accommodation, facilities for sick antenatal patients, and a residential section for medical students and a new premature baby unit.
A dedicated artificial limb and appliance centre, the first in the country, was built at the Mill Road site and opened on 25 July 1961. It served the entire Liverpool Regional Health Board area with a population of two and a half million and supplied prosthetic aids to National Health Service patients and war pensioners.
Changes within the NHS in the mid 1970's almost saw the closure of Mill Road as cost-cutting measures were called for by Liverpool Area Health Authority. A compromise was found where Mill Road was to stay open, taking on the maternity units of Broadgreen and Sefton General. The 1970's and 1980's saw many administrative changes. In 1985 Mill Road, Liverpool Maternity Hospital and the Women’s Hospital came together as the Liverpool Obstetric and Gynaecological Unit. The Unit became a trust status in 1992 and became the Liverpool Obstetric and Gynaecological Service NHS Trust.
A new building was needed and in 1992 work started on the New & United Liverpool Women’s Hospital building at Crown Street. In-patient services were transferred from Mill Road to the Women’s Hospital.
In November 1993 the main part of the hospital was closed. Robert Atlay was the Medical Director at Mill Road hospital in Liverpool when it finally closed its doors to patients in 1993. He had fought to keep the hospital open in the 1970's and 1980's when cuts were being made and he is credited with many administrative reforms which made the maternity unit a happy place to visit. He had studied at Mill Road as a student in 1958 and spent most of his career there.