Liverpool Hospitals - Sefton General Hospital

 

Toxteth Park Workhouse on Smithdown Road which later became Sefton General Hospital

Sefton General Hospital was originally part of Toxteth Park Workhouse, which, complete with its landmark clock tower, was first opened in 1859 and was part of the West Derby Union. In 1923 it became known as the Smithdown Road Institution which expanded over the years to fill the land between the Toxteth Park cemetery wall and Smithdown Road, where the Asda Store and its car park now stand.  In 1930 the Union was disbanded due to the abolition of the poor law, and the hospital, which was now administered by Liverpool Corporation, changed its name to Smithdown Road Infirmary and later became Sefton General Hospital. It had a large maternity section and also offered acute care services as well as mental health and maternity services. Ronald William Wycherley (aka singer Billy Fury) was born at the hospital in 1940 while transgender pioneer April Ashley was born there in 1935. 

(see more here - http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2017/02/mersey-beat-billy-fury.htm.) and  (http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/12/a-liverpoool-exemplar-april-ashley.html). 

At the end of the Second World War the hospital had over 1,000 beds and came under the care of the National Health Service in 1948. 

April 1963

 

It was here John Lennon's mother Julia Lennon was taken after being a victim in a road accident and was pronounced DOA on the 15th of July 1958. John was 17 years old at the time, and he was at Julia’s house at 17 Bloomfield Road when a policeman came to tell him and John Dykins, (Julia's boyfriend) that she had been involved in an accident but did not tell them of the outcome. The two immediately rushed there in a taxi, to learn the distressing news. This was the hospital where Julia’s two daughters by Dykins had also been born, Julia and Jacqueline, and where Dykins himself died in 1969, another victim of a road accident.

John Charles Julian Lennon, son to John and Cynthia Lennon was born here early on the 8th of April 1963. Cynthia said, "John had phoned often over the last few days and I knew [his aunt] Mimi would tell him I'd gone into the hospital when he called again, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he should be at the birth. Having fathers present for the birth just wasn’t the custom then. The Beatles were on tour at the time, and John didn't see his son until the 11th of April. It is said that, when John finally visited his wife and son, he held him in his arms and said: "Who's going to be a famous little rocker like his Dad then?"

Sefton General Hospital, one of the oldest and largest in Liverpool (30th of October, 1973)

 

By the 1970s the number of beds had been halved and by 1995 plans were unveiled to demolish the largely empty hospital to make way for housing or retail space. The massive workhouse block and tower that once dominated Smithdown Road were flattened in the late 1990s and The Asda supermarket was opened in November 2001 by four midwives who used to work at Sefton General with the hospital's foundation stone was built into the new Asda store. However the site still has plenty of healthcare connections. If you wander to the back of the Asda car park you'll find a surviving hospital building which is now part of the Smithdown Health Park. It includes the South Liverpool NHS Walk-In Centre and the Kevin White Unit run by the Mersey Care NHS mental health care trust. On Smithdown Road itself there's Sefton Park Medical Centre - which bills itself as a "student friendly" GP's practice - as well as the Sefton Park pharmacy and the Smithdown Children's NHS walk-In centre.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2025/03/liverpool-hospitals-royal-liverpool.html