|
|
The Queen's Hospital
Founded 1847 in Bath Row, became Birmingham Accident Hospital in 1941 and closed in 1993. Building frontage was listed and incorporated into new accommodation for University Students.
The Queens Hospital in Bath Row is under the patronage of Her Majesty, the Earl of Dudley being President; this charity is indebted for its origin to the late William Sands Cox F.R.S. and was incorporated as a Clinical Hospital, 12th Aug 1867. The foundation stone was laid 18 June 1840 by Earl Howe, and in the following year the building designed by Messrs Bateman and Drury, and erected at a cost of £8,746 was opened by the Lord Bishop of Worcester.
The Hospital is supported by annual subscriptions, and has 132 beds; connected with it are detached wards, and there is also an obstetric department, to which deserving persons properly recommended are admitted. A building for the out patient department together with laundry and mortuary, was erected in the year 1873, at a cost of £10,000; of which sum the working classes of Birmingham contributed £4,000. The old and new buildings are connected by a glazed passage, used by the patients as a promenade, and there are extensive grounds for the use of convalescents; the number of in patients for the year 1898 was 2,020, and of out patients 26,539.
Source: Kelly's Directory 1900
|
The Queen's Hospital
This great Hospital is the second general Hospital in Birmingham. It was founded in the year 1840 in connexion with the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery; a school which in 1843 became incorporated under the name of the "Queen's College".
It has a large acting medical and surgical staff, consisting of three physicians, three surgeons, two physicians for out patients, three surgeons for out patients, an ophthalmic surgeon and an obstetric officer.
To William Sands Cox is due the merit of establishing the Queens Hospital. He was a remarkable man. Born in Birmingham in 1802, educated at King Edward's School, articled to his Father (a Birmingham Surgeon), he began to study at the General Hospital and continued his studies at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals in London and Paris. He returned to Birmingham in 1825, and giving up all thought of acquiring a large general practice resolved to start a School of Anatomy of his own. Sands Cox soon began his first course of "Lectures on Anatomy with Physiology and Surgical Observations" at his residence in Temple Row to a class of nineteen pupils, including Oliver Pemberton, Dickenson Crompton and Bell Fletcher.
He then formed plans for extending his scheme to the formation of a regular School of Medicine, and in 1828 it was decided to form a School of Medicine and Surgery in Birmingham on the plan of similar institutions at Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and other large Towns. It was stated that the hospital and other medical and surgical institutions of Birmingham possessed advantages of clinical instruction scarcely inferior, out of the Metropolis, to any in the Kingdom.
The School was transferred to Snow Hill by Sands Cox at his own expense, and was removed to Paradise Street in 1833 - the beginning of what afterwards became Queen's College.
In 1838 Sands Cox succeeded in interesting the Rev. Dr. Warneford, Rector of Bourton-on-the-Water, who contributed no less than £27,150 in fourteen years.
The promoters desired a clinical institution in which they might individually take some part, and over which they could exercise more or less control.
An appeal for a clinical hospital was forthwith made which was responded to by munificent donations from the Dowager Queen Adelaide downwards, and in June 1840 the foundation stone of the Queen's Hospital was laid by Earl Howe. It was opened in 1841 with seventy beds, and soon afterwards the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Victoria was obtained, with permission to adopt the title of "The Queen's Hospital"; which Queen Alexandra has continued. H.R.H. Prince Albert also accepted the position of President of the Hospital.
In 1880 Mason College was opened as a Science College. Later the classes of Physiology, Chemistry and Botany were transferred to Mason College, and eventually in 1892 the Medical Faculty of Queen's College became the Queen's Faculty of Medicine in Mason College. It is now part of the University of Birmingham.
Queen's Hospital was soon enlarged; by 1845 detached wards for the reception of infectious and contagious cases were added, accommodation for twenty-eight additional beds being provided.
In 1847, by a penny subscription, a sum of £905 1s 3d was collected and handed over as a free contribution to the Queen's Hospital. This collection gave the idea from which the Hospital Saturday Fund was eventually evolved.
In 1867 the adjacent St Martin's Rectory grounds were purchased and a Working Men's extension Fund for the Queen's Hospital was begun, in order to provide a new out patient department.
Originally, admission was by subscriber's ticket, but in 1875 the Queen's became a free hospital, the Governors giving up the right to nominate patients. A small registration fee of one shilling is charged, but is remitted in a large number of cases.
Lord Leigh laid the foundation stone in 1871 when a hymn was specially written by the Rev. Charles Kingsley and sung by a thousand children from the "Birmingham Schools Choral Union".
Various improvements and additions were made from time to time and in 1908 an entirely new block was opened with wards on three stories as well as a roof ward for six patients, the first of its kind in Europe. The accommodation of the Nursing Home was increased from thirth four to seventy four and the hospital beds are now 178, viz. sixty for medical and 118 for surgical, including the Obstetric and Ophthalmic Departments. In 1877 there were 16,117 patients and in 1908 39,483 patients, viz. 2,685 in patients and 36,708 out patients.
Average annual expenditure during last three years £14,729, average receipts £10,778 giving an average deficit of £3,951, which has been deducted from the legacies and Exceptional Donations account.
Source: Birmingham Institutions; Lectures given at the University. Hospitals by John Henry Lloyd.
Cornish Brothers Ltd., 1911.
|
Q.H. Annual 1935
A FOREWORD
BY
SIR CHARLES GRANT ROBERTSON C.V.O., M.A., LL.D.
The "Q.H." Annual has rendered notable service to the Queens Hospital, for it has been the instrument of raising each year no small sum from all who have enjoyed what the Editor has provided. But with 1935, the "Q.H." enters a new chapter in its career; since January 1st was the "Appointed Day" on which both the Queens and the General Hospital ceased to exist as separate and independent institutions, and fused two historic and honourable traditions and records in the United Hospital and the United Board of Management.
This fusion in itself is a notable event in the evolution of Birmingham as a City; it is no less notable in the evolution of our Voluntary Hospital System. The amalgamation is a necessary stage in the creation of the Hospitals Centre. Memories are short; let me recall, therefore, the structure of the scheme. In 1925, a Joint Committee unanimously recommended that a Hospitals Centre should be established on the site, provided by the generosity of Messrs Cadbury, at Edgbaston, that the University Medical School should be transferred to this site, that the Centre should take the place of the separate extensions of the Queens and General, and that those two hospitals should be united under a single management. The Executive Board of the Centre, which then came into existence, agreed to make its main function the planning and erection of the Centre Hospital, the management of which could be handed over to the United Board, while the Executive Board remained the owner and could proceed with other features of the Centre Scheme.
The amalgamation and unification of the General and Queens are, therefore, an integral and essential part of the comprehensive scheme. Some time in 1937-38 the new Centre Hospital ought to be open for receiving patients. The United Board will then probably be invited to take over the management, and be responsible for administering three hospitals in a single co-ordinated system. How they will do it need not concern us at present.
But meanwhile the United Hospitals have to render their services to the community and make two ends meet. United, they need just as much help as in 1934 (indeed, rather more). The friends of the Queens Hospital will, I hope, realise that the duty of support is as imperative as ever it has been in the past. The United Hospital has no resources of its own; it has only the resources of the Queens and the General, under a single control.
But there is an additional reason for help. The more efficient the General and Queens are, the more easy will be the transition to the final stage - the new Centre Hospital. Friends of the Centre can, therefore, feel that if there were at one time divergent and conflicting loyalties - to the Queens, to the General, and to the Centre - the divergence and conflict are now merged and reconciled in the larger unity and the wider range. Each several part can now work for the all-embracing whole.
I can accordingly plead in this foreword for a wider circulation and a larger net return. The best way of showing our appreciation of what the Editor of "Q.H." has done in the past, and wishes to do now and in the future, is to double the sale. The article offered is well worth the trifle that is asked for it. If making two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a creditable achievement, then let every previous reader or subscriber dispose of two copies where only one was to his credit; and let that be his "good deed" for the day.
EDITOR'S NOTE
The Annual "Q.H." was first published in 1932, on behalf of the Queens Hospital, Birmingham, and, with the two following issues, resulted in the sum of £873 11s 1d being handed over to that Institution. The Queens Hospital has now been amalgamated with the General Hospital, thus forming the United Hospital, but it has been thought advisable, in view of the established reputation of the publication, to retain its original title.
|
|
THE STREET FLOWER SELLERS
BY HEDLEY LUCAS
I never see the folk who stand
With flowers to sell in crowded street
but that I think that still more grand
Than coloured country come to greet
The Town, is toil without pretence
Of those who offer gems for pence.
Mr. Hedley Lucas, whose poem is here reproduced, was for some years House Governor of the Queens Hospital.
Source: Q.H. Annual 1935
|
Page updated September 04, 2004
Copyright © Rossbret
|
Queens Hospital