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| pic courtesy of robmcrorie |
The building had its origins in the establishment in 1841 of a Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary for the Diseases of Women and Children in Horatio Street, Scotland Road. This transferred in 1845 to Pembroke Place, but soon outgrew the premises and so it transpired that in 1862 James Seaton Smyth, a prominent surgeon originally from Ireland, established the Liverpool Hospital for Cancer and Diseases of the Skin on Roscoe Street. When he died in 1869 he bequeathed £10,000 to the institution and a new lying-in hospital containing 35 beds was built in Myrtle Street to the designs of JD Jee. It cost £3,000 and was opened by the Bishop of Chester in July 1862 and although The Royal Marsden Hospital in London was the world's first cancer hospital in 1851, Liverpool, overflowing with wealth and energy at this point in its history, was not far behind and was the first of its kind in the UK pioneering treatments for cancer. It was at this site that radiation therapy was first used to treat cancer in Liverpool, after scientific discoveries in the early twentieth century led to X-rays and radium being used in medicine. In 1930 the hospital became known as The Liverpool Radium Institute and Hospital for Cancer. In 1869 the Lying-in Hospital was amalgamated with the Liverpool Ladies' Charity, established in 1796 to alleviate suffering of poor families, and was re-named the Ladies' Charity and Lying-in Hospital. The hospital was forced to close in 1881 because of infection which was thought to be the result of combining obstetric and gynaecological cases in one building. In 1882 the Corporation acquired a site on the corner of Brownlow Hill and Brownlow Street and a new maternity hospital was erected to a plan dominated by the new principles of separation and isolation to designs by E H Banner. The Myrtle Street building was sold for £5,000 to the Committee of the Hospital for Cancer and Diseases of the Skin and later renamed The Liverpool Radium Institute and by 1901 was one of the two major radiotherapy centres in the North West of England. In the 1950s, the decision was made to move the organisation, now named The Liverpool Clinic, and its cancer services from Liverpool to Wirral, with a new Regional Radiotherapy Centre being established at Clatterbridge. The site, originally the location of a workhouse and infectious diseases clinic, was already home to Clatterbridge Hospital. Part of the site had been used as barracks and a prisoner of war camp during World War II. The Radiotherapy Centre, which opened in 1958, consisted of a purpose-built treatment unit containing the Mullard linear accelerator, an operating theatre, plus supporting facilities. Three wards, Dee, Weaver and Mersey, housed 70 beds in converted military huts.
In 1931 a narrow eight-storey block was added to the rear of the building to the designs of Rees and Holt, the first stage of a never-completed planned rebuilding of the cancer hospital. A single-storey pre-fabricated block was subsequently added to the west side of the building, said to date from the 1940s, and a full-height canted bay extension was built to the rear range in the 1960s. It had become part of Liverpool John Moores University around 1948 and was used for teaching as part of the university's Faculty of Business and Law, until a controversial move by the university around 2006 when the building, along with Hahnemann House on Hope Street and the former School of Art were sold to Maghull Developments, who planned to demolish the building. Despite campaigns to prevent the building's demolition, which had been named after the women's campaigner and social reformer Josephine Butler, who had established a women's refuge on the site in the 19th century, including moves to have it listed, the building was demolished, later to be replaced with students flats and restaurant/ cafe units on the ground floor.
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| Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool |
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2025/03/liverpool-hospitals-sefton-general.html
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