The Battle for a Children’s Hospital for Glasgow - Iain Hutchison 27 September 20018

Our next meeting will be held on 27 September 2018 at 7.30, in room D133, McLean Building, UWS. Paisley Campus. This room is accessed via the main entrance in High Street and will be signposted.

Guests are welcome, and we ask that they make a donation, suggested amount £3.00.

The speakers details are below:

Iain Hutchison is a research associate in the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Glasgow.

He is a board member of the worldwide Disability History Association and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

He is the author of A History of Disability in Nineteenth-Century Scotland, and of Seeing Our History which explored the lives of people with sight loss in Edwardian Edinburgh and Borders.

He is currently working on an historical research project, investigating the Scottish National Institution at Larbert, a training asylum for mentally-impaired children. He recently completed research that evaluates the clearance and emigration to New Brunswick of 139 people from Fair Isle in 1862.

He was the researcher and lead author on a project to trace the social history of Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, now published as Child Health in Scotland. This project is the subject of his talk today.

An abstract of the speech follows:

In 1861, a proposal was made for the creation of a children’s hospital for Glasgow. However, this was opposed by the directors of Glasgow Royal Infirmary. They argued that The Royal made all the provision needed to care for children. Underlying its objections, however, were the concerns of the Royal Infirmary that a children’s hospital would be a strong competitor for the charitable support on which both hospitals would depend. It was therefore more than twenty years before the children’s hospital opened in a converted townhouse. In 1914, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children moved to a new, purpose-built facility at Yorkhill, and from this location it served the whole of the west of Scotland for the next one hundred years.

This presentation explains the struggle to provide a children’s hospital for the industrial west. It describes the measures taken in its early years to confront the conditions of poor housing and deprivation that were a barrier to returning ill children to good health. This included a street dispensary where, among other procedures, tonsils were removed with minimal formality, and a country branch where children were nourished on rice pudding to re-equip them for tenement life. While many historical studies of hospitals often focus on great physicians and surgeons and their contributions to the advancement of medical knowledge, this paper considers the healthcare provided to return sick children through the experiences of its hard-pressed nurses.

The presentation arises from a study of the social history of the hospital, Child Health in Scotland. Published by Scottish History Press at £24.95, the book is available for £20 to members and supporters of Paisley Philosophical Institution.  www.keapublishing.com; keapublishing.scotland@gmail.com