In August 1820 the Liverpool Opthalmic Infirmary, supported by voluntary contributions, was established by surgeon Thomas Christian of 6 Bold Street at 29 Slater Street, a house on the corner of Slater Street and Wood Street. Previously for six years, the poor of the town afflicted with diseases of the eye had received very extensive benefit from certain individuals in the profession, who had associated themselves for the purpose of giving gratuitous advice and assistance, in complaints of that nature, on the plan of a dispensary. In 1839 the Ear Institution was founded privately by Hugh Neill, aural and opthalmic surgeon, which the Mayor and council granted a lease, at a nominal rent, of premises at 5 Mount Pleasant on the corner of Harford Street. The new building was larger, lighter and airier and could accommodate in-patients. In 1841, at a public meeting of the town, it was united with the Ear Institution and assumed its new name of the Liverpool Eye and Ear Infirmary. Hugh Neill served on the staff of both this charity and of the Liverpool Opthalmic Infirmary and he recommended that the two charities should combine. This was agreed "... at a public meeting of the town..." in 1841 and the result of the amalgamation was the Eye and Ear Infirmary, occupying the Harford Street premises. It was in this Infirmary, according to the author Thomas Herbert Bickerton that "... chloroform was first used as an anaesthetic in Liverpool."
In 1846 the Infirmary moved to larger premises at 90 Mount Pleasant, than which, according to the Liverpool Standard, 19th of January 1847, a "... finer or more accessible and airy site could not have been chosen..." There follows a detailed description of the building and its facilities, noting the fact that "... From the yard [the patients] are admitted ... into a Receiving Room, a comfortable apartment ... with benches and forms and ... a good fire ... in the old establishment ... the poor blind or affected in vision ... were necessitated to "bide their time" in the open air ...
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| Liverpool Eye and Ear Infirmary |
The work of the hospital continued to increase and in 1881 it moved to
the splendid 'domestic revival' style purpose-built hospital building
designed by the celebrated Victorian architect CO Ellison in Myrtle
Street. The following account of this building in Myrtle Street is
condensed from Sir H. C. Burdett's well known work 'Hospitals and
Asylums of the World'. 'The Infirmary is built in the shape of an
'E' (on its back) the principle frontage being in Myrtle Street. This
frontage is bisected through its whole length by a corridor with a
staircase at each end.
In the basement are the kitchen, offices and
store rooms, with furnace for the heating apparatus. There are two
covered airing courts and a space for a laundry.
On the Ground
Floor the front part was devoted to residence for officers; the main
entrance, with porters room and small waiting room and the board-room.
The left wing on the ground floor contained the out-patient waiting room, consultation room, dark room and dispensary.
On
the first floor one wing was arranged to hold fourteen beds with
lavatories, bathrooms and nurses kitchens for female patients. the
corresponding wing to hold sixteen beds for males.
On the second floor the wards were arranged in a similar manner.
In
the front of the building on the first and second floor were day rooms
for the patients and nurses sitting rooms. At the back of the building
and over the board room were the operating theatres, one on each floor.
According
to the 1902 Annual Report 6,698 new eye cases and 2,154 new ear cases
were seen and prescribed for 28,617 times in the out-patients during the
year 1902 and 613 important operations were performed.'
In 1932 the hospital became the Eye, Ear and Throat Infirmary. After 1948 eye patients were no longer treated at this hospital and it became the Ear, Nose and Throat Infirmary. The hospital was finally closed in 1978 prior to the opening of the new Royal Liverpool Hospital in 1979.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2025/01/liverpool-hospitals-john-bagot-hospital.html
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