Germ proofing.
Infectious diseases were a constant problem throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. In 1885, of the 155 patients in the hospital, 30 were recorded as infectious disease cases. In 1892 the hospital reported on the taxing impact on staff and resources of typhoid cases and an influenza epidemic. The challenge was to prevent the infections from spreading to other patients, to staff and beyond. Isolation was the solution.
In 1891 and again in 1915 plans for isolation wards were commissioned, and the wards constructed. The first was designed by John Wiltshire Pender and Thomas Silk, and the second by Walter Pender.
Pender and Silk, Plan of infectious disease ward, Maitland Hospital, 1 June 1891.
(University of Newcastle Cultural Collections, Pender Archive, M5595)
The early isolation wards had their problems. In an 1899 report of the Royal Commission on Public Charities they were commended as ‘very useful’ but that they were ‘almost intolerably hot in summer’. They also proved inadequate. In May 1910, for example, eleven cases of diphtheria were under treatment in the hospital. There was, however, insufficient accommodation in the isolation wards: patients were put in the nurses’ quarters in the isolation block, and the waiting room in the administration block was converted to a bedroom for the nurses.
Lobbying began for a new and larger isolation block. It took a further two and a half years before plans were approved and financial assistance agreed to, and another year before building commenced. The new isolation wards, along with a separate residence for nurses who worked in the isolation wards, opened in 1916.
Walter Pender, Details from plan of isolation wards and nurses’ quarters for Maitland Hospital, 1 September 1915.
(University of Newcastle Cultural Collections, Pender Archive, M5818).
The Maitland Hospital, c1916. (Maitland City Library)
The 1891 isolation ward building is in the foreground and, behind it, the 1916 isolation ward building and nurses’ cottage. The 1891 building had been relocated so that the 1916 building could be erected. It was demolished in 1916/1917. The 1916 building and cottage are still in use.
Views of the 1916 isolation wards and nurses’ cottage, 2020. (Janis Wilton)
In 2021 the former isolation ward building houses The Maitland Hospital Volunteers, and the former isolation nurses’ cottage is a storage space for The Maitland Hospital Collection. The ward building was previously used by the Blood Bank.
References
Maitland Mercury, 5 April 1887, 23 January 1892, 4 November 1899, 12 May 1910, 4 December 1913, 4 April 1914, 25 May 1914, 24 December 1914, 22 August 1916.