Clipping the press.
Front covers of some of the Maitland Hospital scrapbooks
(Maitland Hospital Collection Items 164, 277, 278, 279, 280)
There are a number of scrapbooks in the Maitland Hospital Collection. They include cardboard covered butcher’s paper books, a set of green hard cover books with ‘Newspaper cuttings’ printed in gold lettering on their covers, and a spiral bound sketch book. The pages are buckling a little from glue and age. The covers and binding of a couple are showing wear and tear.
The scrapbooks hold press clippings. At different times someone has kept an eye on press coverage of the hospital, cut out relevant articles, pasted them in chronological sequence into the books and, most of the time, dated the clippings and stated the names of the newspapers.
A small sample of press clippings from the Maitland Hospital scrapbooks.
The books cover the periods 1934 to 1947 (incomplete), 1971 to 1974, and 1979 to 1987.
There is no record of who created the scrapbooks. This is a loss. It would be good to know the who, why and how behind the selection and work.
The scrapbooks, however, remain an informative pleasure to browse. They provide rich and easy access to newspaper coverage and, for the later periods, there are plenty of photographs.
They also provide a sense of key issues at different times or, at least, those regarded as important by the creators of the scrapbooks.
For example:
1930s-1940s: An era of expansion, new buildings, and the beautification of the hospital grounds.
1979-1987: Funding cuts, staff shortages, and the new management structures.
1985-1986: Nursing and nurses’ conditions more broadly in the state, mentions of changes to area health boards, and ongoing concern about a bed shortage at the Maitland Hospital.
1986-1987: Disagreements about the state of Maitland Hospital, the establishment of Area Health Boards, the state government’s 1986 health budget, money allocated for a master plan for the Hospital, and fundraising and other support services.
Significance
The scrapbooks are of historic significance as representative of earlier means to collect and collate press clippings about a particular topic, and as tangible and accessible records of aspects of the history of Maitland Hospital as presented primarily through local newspapers.