A drunk resident apothecary.
Front cover of the Maitland Hospital Minute Book 1859 to 1872
(Maitland Hospital Collection Item 74)
The oldest item in the Maitland Hospital Collection is the hospital committee’s minute book for 1859 to 1872.
It is a big book: 46 x 32 x 8.5 centimetres. It has a soft, brown, stained and slightly damaged leather cover with decorated leather bindings. The paper flyleaves have a mucky maroon brown and moss green marbled pattern.
The entries are handwritten with one lot of handwriting so cursive, so sloping, and so decorative that it is challenging to read.
Sample pages from the minute book.
As I turn the pages and browse the contents, there is the tickle smell of dust and of age. There is also the researcher’s delight at noticing the names, contributions, and sometimes the signatures, of local identities and of the medical and other staff who worked at the hospital.
Closer reading provides insights into this second decade of Maitland Hospital’s existence on the site which it occupied for over 170 years. Closer reading also causes wonder about the backstories that underpin so many of the entries.
For example:
George Lowson was the ‘resident surgeon’ (also referred to as the ‘resident apothecary’ and ‘resident dispenser’) at the hospital from 1865 to 1868. His efficiency, at one point, is discussed and it is noted that he is ‘well spoken of’. Other entries, however, indicate that he was reported for being intoxicated, being violent, and using bad language. In August 1868 he was ‘dismissed at once’ following an episode in which, in a drunken state, he smashed items in his rooms in the hospital.
The minutes also record a regular turn over in staff employed as cooks, wardsmen, laundresses and gardeners. They are often named. They are praised. Some of them, like Lowson, are reported for a variety of bad behaviour.
The minute book tracks, in thin detail, the hospital’s decision in the late 1860s to appoint a Nightingale trained nurse from Sydney, and it reports the arrival of Deborah Morrow who is recognised as Maitland Hospital’s first matron.
There are, as well, accounts and lists of building repairs and improvements; details about specific patients; donations of money and in kind; lists of goods and suppliers; financial reports; the acquisition of medical supplies and equipment; and decisions about the respective roles of different staff.
Others have also discovered and used the details and stories recorded in the minute book. In 1977, for example, the hospital’s matron, Elva Nickolas, worked through the minutes to document aspects of the history of nursing at the hospital.
Matron Elva Nickolas and chief executive officer Bob Brown with the minute book, Maitland Mercury, 4 November 1977.
(Maitland and District Historical Society Pam File)
Significance
The minute book is highly significant because it provides a tangible and contemporary record of the second decade of Maitland Hospital. As such, it offers insights into the management, staff and developments on site, and it records the participation of a significant range of prominent local residents. It also provides evidence of forms and materials of minute keeping in the mid-nineteenth century. It is in reasonable condition and is intact.