The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary began life as a voluntary hospital, which lasted until the National Health Service arrived in 1948.
In 1804, a dispensary offering free advice and medicines was established in Etruria, and a fever ward, called the House of Recovery, was built in order to treat the infectious diseases that were rife in the area.
These buildings stood near to the site of the present Etruria Industrial Museum.
However, rapid industrial development and increased mechanisation in workplaces led to a rise in serious accidents.
The Etruria buildings, located on a cramped site, were clearly not adequate for the needs of the area’s growing population, whilst the nearest larger infirmary was located some miles away, in Stafford.
A new infirmary building was opened in 1819, near to the present Etruria Park.
With relatively few affluent people in the area ready to support the cost of providing free care, an appeal to the working classes was made.
The appeal proposed a system of financing the infirmary wherein workers would pay a small weekly subscription, a penny a week or less, through their place of work.
The workers then received free treatment for themselves and, by 1822, for members of their families.
This subscription strategy provided a successful financial framework for the infirmary right up until the creation of the NHS in 1948.
As medical technology and research advanced, the infirmary moved with the times. Although a medical record book written by R. C. Garner in 1854-6 gives a graphic account of cases in the infirmary, illustrating what life was really like in a busy working hospital.
The building itself was blighted at this time by the effects of coal mining, subsidence and industrial pollution.
As a result, the infirmary moved to Hartshill in the 1860s. The move may have come sooner, were it not for good old Potteries parochialism.
Burslem and Hanley led the opposition in the northern pottery towns against the move to healthier Hartshill.
The new, larger building was arranged according to the pavilion pattern adopted, although not invented, by Florence Nightingale. It was regarded as state-of-the-art and stood in what had been a hayfield.
The new venture was believed to need a lady superintendent, as advocated by Florence Nightingale. However, when tensions grew between the working men of the area and the lady, it was decided to replace her with a superintendent of nurses.
Intensive training of nurses followed and new methods of care were implemented.
In 1876, a caesarian section operation was performed by John Alcock. It was one of the first in the country in which both the mother and baby survived.
By 1906, complaints were lodged about over-crowding, especially in the outpatients’ department. But the ageing infirmary, with all its faults, performed well during the First World War, treating 2,500 war-wounded in-patients during the conflict, plus civilians.
King George V opened the new extensions to the infirmary in 1925, declaring to be Stoke-on-Trent a city and the infirmary to be a “Royal” one.
Sizeable donations from the Pottery Union, Miss Twyford and others enabled new wards and theatres to be created.
The coming of the Second World War saw a centralisation of hospital services.
The emergency hospital scheme brought together voluntary hospitals and municipal hospitals such as the City General and the seven infectious diseases hospitals across North Staffordshire.
This was seen as convenient re-organisation ahead of the creation of the National Health Service in 1948.
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(c) 2008 Sentinel, The (Stoke-on-Trent UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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