A kind of historical museum.
In 1933 as new buildings at Maitland Hospital were nearing completion, the hospital secretary, Clarence D. McIntyre, shared his enthusiasm for historical items in the hospital. He listed some. He talked about the hospital as one of the oldest hospital buildings in the state. He wanted to have some of the items on show. He suggested ‘we will have a kind of historical museum’. The Maitland Mercury reported McIntyre’s efforts and hopes:
Maitland Mercury, 10 May 1933
The items McIntyre mentioned have disappeared. Since then, and at different times, hospital staff and supporters have collected and collated objects, photographs, administrative records and other memorabilia that record the hospital’s history and invite stories about the hospital.
In the early 1990s, for example, with the proposed demolition of the 1920s nurses’ home, there was talk of establishing a medical museum in the former isolation nurses’ cottage on the hospital site. Items collected by the hospital’s chief executive officer, Ron Pickett, were in storage in the cottage.
Maitland Mercury, undated press clipping, early 1990s.
(Maitland and District Historical Society Pamphlet Files)
In 1997 there was still talk of establishing a medical museum with equipment and items collected by Ron Pickett and by the hospital engineer, Robert Campbell. The items included:
… a polished concrete mortuary slab from the… closed Gresford Hospital… anaesthetic machines from the 1940s, old operating tables and medical instruments, steel beds and a telephone booth that was once in the foyer of the hospital. (Newcastle Post, 22 January 1997).
As with the items identified in the 1930s, these too have disappeared.
Newcastle Post, 22 January 1997.
(Maitland and District Historical Society, Pamphlet Files)
In 2019 as part of the transition from the old to the new Maitland Hospital, the Collected Memory Project was tasked with identifying significant items and gathering them into the Maitland Hospital Collection. The items are being documented and stored safely. Some will be on display in the new Maitland Hospital; some will be used by artists for the exhibition at the Maitland Regional Art Gallery in the second half of 2021; a number are the focus of other hospital stories on this website.
Below is a small sample of items from the collection.
Click on an image below to get a larger view and a slide show.
Photographs and other items from the collection are also used across many of the stories on the website.