A magnificent black pig.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the Maitland Hospital grounds included vegetable gardens where staff, volunteers and, sometimes, convalescent patients grew produce to be used by the hospital and to sell in order to raise funds for the institution. In January 1861, for example, the house surgeon George Mullins reported that ‘the grounds have been formed into a vegetable and flower garden (from the former of which the institution is supplied with all necessary vegetables)’.

Mullins established a precedent. In 1872 the local paper reported that ‘the grounds … are well kept, and produce a good supply of vegetables for the use of the inmates (sic).’ There was also ‘a magnificent black pig’ in the pig sty, donated as a gift for a fundraising lottery.

Vegetable gardens remained a feature until well into the twentieth century.

Vegetable gardens on northern side of the hospital site, late 1950s/early 1960s.

(Maitland Hospital Collection Item 165.5)

The edge of the 1905 building is on the right hand side of the photograph, the 1930s pathology and mortuary building is in the centre, and the 1916 isolation ward and the tennis court are in the background.

References

Maitland Mercury, 19 January 1862, 23 March 1872.