 |
| The first voluntary Hospital for Venereal disease |
A Lock Hospital was an establishment that specialised in treating sexually transmitted diseases and as such were predominantly attended by female prostitutes or males who had engaged in a sexual act with a person who they were not familiar with. The term 'lock' was long used to describe a leper hospital, where lepers were isolated & treated. Liverpool Lock Hospital opened in Ashton street in 1834 and became a part of the Royal Infirmary under the management of the same committee and was a plain brick building just one storey high. It was likened to a army hut, with 15 windows in a row with a door at each end and a door in the middle.
The Liverpool Infirmary had been extended to deal especially with seamen suffering with venereal disease as no other hospital was available to admit patients of both sexes suffering in this way. Wards accommodating 25 patients of both sexes had been set aside for this purpose but this soon proved to be insufficient and thus the Lock Hospital was built giving an additional 50 beds. The Hospital had its own surgical staff, superintendent, matron, nurses and so on, with their efforts directed towards the rescue of fallen women, to induce them 'to give up their wretched life'. Married women, young females who had 'only just commenced an immoral life', and prostitutes were admitted. During 1834 there were 414 patients admitted, 218 males and 196 females and by 1881 this total had risen to 642. As the hospital was part of the Royal Infirmary, as such it was financially able to continue to operate because if it had been independant it would likely have had to close. Originally it had been intended that it would have been extended by another storey but the Committee had never been able to afford it. The Liverpool Lock Hospital remained the only one of its kind in the city where both men and women with venereal disease were admitted freely, except for 'foreign sailors from foreign vessels'. Patients could enter and discharge themselves from the hospital voluntarily, but in most cases they were persuaded of the need to
stay until cured.
 |
| Rules for Patients in Hospitals |
Despite the increasing presence of the malady in the later years of the nineteenth century, many lock hospitals and lock wards in general hospitals were closed by the end of the Victorian era, including the Liverpool Lock Hospital, which disappeared in 1899 after Frederick W. Lowndes had been appointed Consulting Surgeon and the reception of inpatients had ceased. In 1882, in explaining why more males than females attended the Lock Hospital, he stated, "it shows that the males are much more willing to come in; we have no difficulty in keeping the male wards constantly filled, and very severe cases will stay there a very long time. With regard to the female ward ... it had not been unusual to have a whole ward empty for many months together. Those who had been under treatment there stated that they had no objection to the treatment in the hospital; that the superintendent and matron and nurses were most kind, but there was a general reluctance to admit that they were ever diseased. I asked, 'What do you do when you have the bad disorder, and where do you go?' and upon that they denied that they had ever had the bad disorder."
The Harold Cohen Library, Liverpool University was opened on the 21st of May 1938 by Prime Minister Earl Baldwin of Bewdley on the site of the old Lock Hospital and the School of Architecture with the Zion Chapel, Elizabeth St also demolished.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2025/01/liverpool-hospitals-david-lewis.html
No comments:
Post a Comment