Health

The title of the building over the entrance door reads – Parish Hospital of Stoke-upon-Trent 1842 and thousands must have passed its doors every day without a glance in that direction. Now the building is a listed Grade II to ensure its preservation as part of the original workhouse complex.

It was built because of the need for a hospital, not just for inmates of the workhouse, but also the people of Stoke who had nowhere to go for any form of treatment. It is now used as offices. An advertisement was placed for tenders in the Potteries Mercury to build a hospital, the first to be erected in the Borough of Stoke. The article gives a whole list of items require in the specification. During the first world war it was set apart as a military hospital and a number of photographs have survived of this time and included in the article.

Full details of its early life and the types of treatment offered is well worth a read and as such an interesting piece for the early years of hospitals.

This is an Excel sheet listing all known diseases of the time, the number of deaths and their ages.

An important contribution to life and death in the 18^th century listing then all known diseases and how many people died as a consequence. It’s a good study for listing the main causes of death in different areas which in many cases was a direct result of either living or manufacturing conditions. A useful document to study for humanities subjects.

Two hundred and forty-one known deaths in the town of Newcastle under Lyme are recorded in an Excel spread sheet. The record identifies age, occupation, address, rateable value, property owners name, death notice, gravestone and if left a will or not.  This is a tremendous document that for the student studying Victorian pandemics it would provide all the necessary information to a valued interpretation of the stats of the effects of such a damaging pandemic on the community and its economic problems it caused.This is presented on an Excel spreadsheet which can be used to extract many different statistics that may interest a student at College or University.

This three-page document records a significant part that Ether played at the for North Staffs Infirmary at Etruria before which those requiring amputations went through the most agonising surgery with only alcohol as a way of lessening the pain as no anaesthetic had been discovered. Whilst searching the pages of the Staffordshire Advertiser for a totally different subject I came across a most interesting article relating to the first use of ether vapour as an anaesthetic for performing pain free operations as early as 1846 at what was the first North Staffs Infirmary at Etruria before the new one was built in Hartshill in1866.

This story tells how it was a dentist who observed a fellow dentist use nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas,” as aesthetic for a medical demonstration. Unfortunately, the patient awoke while under the aesthetic and he was booed off the stage. After Morton observed this, he consulted a fellow a chemist who suggested using sulfuric ether as anaesthesia for surgery.

For those studying medicine this is a factual story of its very first recorded use at Etruria in Stoke-on-Trent.

For children of measles, mumps and rubella in the middle ages and Victorian times caused considerable concern to medical professionals who rightly feared a major outbreak with terrifying consequences including the loss of life. Since 1796, when Edward Jenner an English country doctor introduced a vaccine for smallpox it has saved more lives worldwide than any other vaccine to date. However, in the case of measles in was not until 1963 that a vaccine became available to protect mainly children but also adults.

The use of historical data used in this article helps us to evaluate and understand this importance of vaccination today. It shows that every town in the potteries was affected by measles in epidemic proportions every few years during the 19^th century.

The first century Saint Giles’ lived from about 650 to about 710 and was also known as Giles’ the Hermit and is the patron saint of lepers. This fact could in many ways have led to the possibility, that the church in Newcastle, dedicated to St. Giles’, was the founding body that created the hospital of St. Lloy only a mile south of the town situated at Trent Vale on the area of the A34. Sadly, there is no written confirmation of its connection because until 1807, St. Giles’ was little more than distant chapel of ease in the ancient parish of Stoke-upon-Trent and it’s that church of St Peter-ad-Vincula, which is recorded and not St. Giles’. Reecords state that it was the responsibility of the Parish of Stoke-upon-Trent, St Peter ad Vincula,

The location is now occupied by the University Hospital teaching buildings. It is here that once stood a hospital dating from around the middle of the 13th century. Documentary evidence of the hospital of St Lloy has been known for many years, but the exact location remained a mystery until 1985 when excavations to the west of the new hospital wards was being under taken. Here were two skeletons uncovered together with stone foundations and a few sherds of medieval pottery. No serious archaeological work was carried out and the site was covered over to enable a car park to be established. From this time, whatever secrets these finds held were to remain hidden for a further sixteen years.

Little written evidence no longer exists but what there is has been well studied and form the basis of this essay. Great read.

Stoke and Wolstantion workhouses population. A study of the trends within the inmate population of both Stoke and Wolstanton workhouses and their causes.

This essay is twenty-seven pages long and containing nearly twelve thousand words. It is one of my major studies on the poor law of Stoke-on-Trent with two workhouse one at Stoke south, the Spittals operated  under the Stoke upon Trent Poor Law Union and the other in the north under the Wolstanton and Burslem Poor Law Union called Chell workhouse. The statistical information is extracted from the census enumerators returns and is an important ingredient into the study of Poor Law and for the purpose of an accurate analysis. The data extracted presents statistical information upon which conclusions are drawn on each workhouse illustrating areas of conformity and the differences found. Each entry was meticulously copied from census enumerators returns directly into spreadsheets where an analytical approach gives up their secrets to identify facts, figures, and trends. This contextualised data provides the means of assessing both the social history perspective and the influences of the Local Government Board and guardians of the poor placed into their care.

The period reflects that of six decades for the Stoke and Wolstanton Workhouses (1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901) providing a prospective between two locations situated six miles apart but serving one industrial conurbation. The findings will be evaluated for the relevant years (1871-1901). The 1851 census will be used as a benchmark for this data.  Stafford and Newcastle-under-Lyme workhouse figures for 1881 will be used as a comparison. It is argued by Goose that despite the census returns are only factual once in every ten years that in fact variations during that period can be considerable producing a very different set of figures:

The Census returns provide us with information at one fixed point in time a perfectly valid historical perspective in its own right but one that masks the considerable coming and goings that the admissions register reveal, either through seasonal fluctuations or because of the activities of incorrigible individuals. As the census will capture higher proportions of long-term residents, it will undoubtedly tend to understate the proportions of individual working age, which feature in greater numbers in the admissions registers but who individually remained in the workhouse for much shorter periods.

This is a short evaluation of what it is all about, not only is it an insight to life in the workhouse system of the time but the basis for a student to formulate their own conclusions of what trends and qualities that each workhouse shared etc. Make a great project for a local history club.It is a perfect example for 6th form or university humanities studies. Also a great asistance to tutors.

This essay is ten pages long and a huge word count of over 12,000 words.

Following the long struggle to overcome the serious stability of the Etruria buildings caused by industry with smoke and subsidence followed by an even longer struggle and different opinions a site at Hartshill was chosen belonging to the Mount estate and was subsequently purchased from Mr. Frederick Bishop, Solicitor of Hanley.
The foundation stone was laid on the 23rd of July 1860 by Sir John Heathcote, MP, the money being raised by a gift from the Prince Regent, out of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster and a legacy of £1,000 bequeathed by Mr John Rogers of the Watlands. The expenses of the additions were principally defrayed by a fancy bazaar held at Newcastle which realised the sum of £940 and with the additional receipts of an oratorio held in the new parish church of Stoke (opened in 1830) which yielded the sum of a further £800. Mr John Tomlinson of Cliffe Ville, at Hartshill displayed great zeal in establishing a firm start of this new Infirmary.
It was a time before the NHS and government funding, so as an ambitious product the finances depended upon the potteries folk to support this project on the principal it was a public hospital. Factory workers agreed to a few pence stopped from their wages, all churches had a special Infirmary Sunday with special services and the hope of more generous giving – all going to the hospital funs.
It also depended upon numerous benefactors who would pay the cost of the building of additional wards and operating theatres of which all would display the names of the benefactor responsible.
All this went on for nearly 100 years until the NHS took over the responsibility of all hospitals in July 1948. Since this date the hospital went from strength to strength both in its structure but also the medical services it provided. 11 x A4 pages and many photographs and nearly 5,000 words