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East Hertfordshire Hospital

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Alternative name(s):
  • East Hertfordshire Joint Hospital (Formerly known as)
  • Hertford and Ware Isolation Hospital (Formerly known as)
  • Hertford and Ware Infectious Diseases Hospital (Formerly known as)
Date: 1893-1948
History: The original East Hertfordshire Joint Hospital (also known as the Hertford and Ware Isolation Hospital) was opened in 1893 in temporary accommodation at Little Gobions Farm in Stapleford. In 1897 building started on a new hospital on Gallows Hill (on Stanstead Road) just outside the town of Hertford, behind the Union Workhouse, and this building was opened on 24 February 1898. It cost approximately £5,454 and housed 30 patients in five different blocks. The hospital was run by the Hertford and Ware Joint Hospital Board between 1893 and 1937. In 1904 the hospital was extended to take 50 patients in 7 blocks. After 1937 it was run by the East Hertfordshire Joint Hospital Board, made up of representatives of Hertford Borough, Hertford Rural District Council, Ware Urban District and Rural District Councils and Hoddesdon Urban District Council.

In 1948, on the creation of the National Health Service, control of the hospital passed to the Hertford Group Hospital Management Committee in the North East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. It provded accommodation for 76 patients from 1948 to 1973. In 1974 it became part of East Hertfordshire District Health Authority in the North West Thames Regional Health Authority. During NHS reforms it became part of the East Hertfordshire Health NHS Trust in 1992, being known later as the East and North Hertfordshire Health NHS Trust. At that time it provided 61 beds for long stay patients. By 2000 the hospital had been demolished and the site used for the building of new houses. Accommodation was being provided for 24 elderly, mentally ill patients at Seward Lodge.
Places:
  • Hertford, Hertfordshire
  • Ware, Hertfordshire
Sources of authority: Poor Law Amendment Act 1868; Public Health Act 1875; Isolation Hospitals Act 1893; Public Health Act 1936; National Health Service Act 1946
Functions, occupations and activities: Health and social care > Hospitals
Historical context: Many towns had some form of isolation hospital from the eighteenth century, usually in the form of a pest house, where verminous or infectious people were treated. It was not, however, until the late nineteenth century that the formal treatment of infectious diseases, such as scarlet fever, typhoid and smallpox, was considered. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1868 dealt briefly with the subject, since most patients with infectious diseases found their way into the workhouse infirmaries because voluntary hospitals could and did refuse to admit them. In 1875 the Public Health Act enabled any local authority to provide hospital accommodation for the treatment of patients with infectious diseases paid for by the rates. It also allowed for two or more authorities to combine to maintain a hospital. In 1893 the first Act relating solely to isolation hospitals was enacted, stating that, on the application of twenty-five or more rate payers, the local authority was to provide an isolation hospital out of the rates, to be run by an Isolation Hospital Committee. Those suffering from TB found themselves in specially appointed sanatoriums and those suffering from VD in the workhouse infirmary. Isolation hospitals were also permitted to open schools or nursing to train nurses specifically in the treatment of infectious diseases. A further Act was enacted in 1901 reinforcing the powers of local authorities to purchase land compulsorily for use as an isolation hospital. In 1936 a further Public Health Act abolished all Isolation Hospital Committees and replaced them with Joint Hospital Boards. Medical advances meant that in the years after the Second World War the need to provide such hospitals became redundant, and many of them were closed in the first years of the National Health Service.
References: Hosprec database; Burdetts and Hospital Yearbooks 1901-1998
Name authority reference: GB/NNAF/C26317 (Former ISAAR ref: GB/NNAF/O91866 )
Collections
Number Description Held by Reference Further information
1
1893-1948: records incl minute books, financial records and misc items
Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies
HI 6
NRA 11973 Hertfordshire
Related record creators
  Record creator Description of relationship Dates Category of relationship
1
North East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board
East Hertfordshire Hospital was subordinate to the North East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board
1948-1974
Hierarchical
2
North West Thames Regional Health Authority
East Hertfordshire Hospital came under the authority of the North West Thames Regional Health Authority.
1974-1992
Hierarchical