West of Subiaco a History of the Shenton Park Campus
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West of Subiaco A History of the Shenton Park Campus Philippa Martyr Bibliographical Details: First published in 1998 by Widowed Isis Internet Publishing. ISBN 0-646-35943-6 Martyr, P. 1998. West of Subiaco: a history of the Shenton Park Campus, 1893-1993. Widowed Isis Internet Publishing. http://www.healthsci.utas.edu.au/pmartyr/public_html/subiaco/ Second edition 2009 ISBN 978-0-9805422-2-6 Martyr, P. 2009. West of Subiaco: a history of the Shenton Park Campus, Perth, Western Australia: Department of Health. Typeset in Arial 12-point; 191pp. Sources of all photographs have been acknowledged where possible. © Department of Health, 2009 iv Table of Contents Preface to First Edition .....................................................................................i Preface to Second Edition.............................................................................. iv Abbreviations.................................................................................................. vi Chapter One: A Fever Hospital in a Suitable Position .....................................1 Chapter Two: Six Shillings a Day ..................................................................19 Chapter Three: A Piecemeal Accumulation...................................................43 Chapter Four: The Metropolitan Infectious Diseases Hospital ......................65 Chapter Five: Intermezzo ..............................................................................99 Chapter Six: Back On Their Feet.................................................................112 Chapter Seven: The Royal Perth (Rehabilitation) Hospital) ........................127 Chapter Eight: Things Old and New ............................................................144 Epilogue ......................................................................................................170 Appendix 1 - Senior Staff at the Infectious Diseases Hospital....................172 Appendix 2 – Copies of Masseur Certification.............................................175 Appendix 3 – Daily Rates Charged Per Patient, IDH...................................177 Appendix 4 - Comprehensive Hospital Rehabilitation Facilities, 1975.........178 Bibliography ................................................................................................179 Index ...........................................................................................................187 i Preface to First Edition This book took on the challenge of trying to provide a history of a hospital - or rather, a succession of hospitals - which had never before been examined in any detail in Western Australian historical writing. This involved the location and analysis of a vast amount of previously untouched archival material. I am very grateful to Chris Stronach for lifting some of the burden off me with his research assistance. This book has proved (quite accidentally) to be, for me, the genesis of a happy and intellectually productive career in writing and researching histories of medicine and health care in Australia. In early 1991, Sir George Bedbrook inquired of the University of Western Australia's History Department, via the Head of Department, Professor Norman Etherington, as to whether there would be any chance of starting a recent Honours graduate on the project of the Royal Perth (Rehabiliation) Hospital's history, from the 1893 smallpox epidemic, as part of a higher degree. I was just such an honours graduate, and one with no other major direction in mind, apart from a vague interest in the history of medicine which I had never previously indulged. As I began my research into the project, it became obvious that the history of the RP(R)H could not be understood unless its foundations as an Infectious Diseases Hospital were explored thoroughly. Sir George, some months before his death, told me that as the project progressed, he was finding himself more and more curious about those first sixty years of infectious care, and so we decided to incorporate the entire history of the Hospital site into the work. Sir George, his medical colleagues including Ellis Griffiths, and his diligent and extremely helpful office staff threw themselves into finding money for the project, which was eventually raised and supported me through one year of research. Those companies and individuals who contributed must be thanked: National Australia Bank, BankWest (formerly R & I), Commonwealth Bank, Health Services Credit Union, Roche Products, Surgical Orthopaedic Services, Medical Sales and Services, Stubber Medical, 3M Australia, Morris Surgical, Stryker Australia (WA), Rosanel Traders, Orthotic Prosthetic Services, the Australian Physiotherapy Association (WA), the Occupational Therapy Association of WA, the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation of WA, Smith and Nephew Australia, the Hon G M Evans MLC, Drs P & P Goatcher, Mr E R Griffiths, Dr P Kailis, Dr W Pannell, R & P Sarich, Mr P Hardcastle, Mr T Keenan, and Mr Richard Vaughan. Mr Ellis Griffiths also deserves an award for bravery for reading through early drafts of the manuscript and offering much-needed encouragement. At the end of 1991, I applied for and gained an Australian Postgraduate Research Award to complete the doctorate which had grown out of the Hospital history, entitled "The professional development of rehabilitation in Australia, 1893-1981". By this stage, the thesis supervised by Professor Etherington - providing a thorough analysis of the development of physical rehabilitation in Australia over a hundred-year period - had outstripped the hospital history, and it was not until the end of 1992 that I turned my full ii attention back to RP(R)H. When the doctorate was submitted in July 1994, I was able to dedicate more time to writing, and to using the material gathered in interstate libraries and archival collections accessed earlier in 1992. The research I had already completed placed the Hospital in a truly national context, and now the local element had to be established. For this, I needed archival material, and plenty of it. The secondary writing on the history of medicine in Western Australia has in the past been rather thin, so I went beyond those sources into wider social history. Chris and I ransacked the Royal Perth Hospital Library archives, and searched the Battye Library's oral history collection for any glimmerings of anecdotal information. The staff of all these institutions, and the Reid and Medical Libraries, University of Western Australia, bore with us in tolerance and good humour, and were of great assistance. The Metropolitan Cemeteries Board also provided valuable information on what became of the graves of the original smallpox victims. I collected some oral history, the tapes of which were very kindly transcribed by Ms Judy Carr of Royal Perth (Rehabilitation) Hospital. I also had many untaped phone and personal conversations with the following people, all of whom are thanked wholeheartedly: Mrs Betty Bell, Mrs Pat De Castilla, Mrs Margery Copley, Miss Rosalind Denny, Mrs Kath Garden, Dr Phyllis Goatcher, Mr Brian Gower, Miss Freda Jacob, Mr John Johnson, Dr Rex Joyner, Mrs Clare Lamb, Mrs Lucy Lockett, Mrs June Rankine-Wilson, Dr Mercy Sadka, Mrs Grace Sedgley, Mr Eric Stovell, Mrs Pat Thorburn, and Mr F Woodbridge. Many of these people also offered photographs for the text, which were gratefully received. The late Brian Gower very kindly gave me access to the Royal Perth Hospital Annual Reports, which filled in many of the gaps. My work with the Western Australian Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation (now the Arthritis Foundation of Australia (WA)), although unable to be completed, was also a valuable source of information about some of the agencies and other providers of services located around the Hospital, and led to other fascinating and productive taped interviews. A major break came in mid-1993, when Gower's successor, Garry England, allowed us access to Royal Perth Hospital's Board of Management Minutes, and when we unearthed the Public Health Department's enormous collection of previously restricted files in the State Archives. We thank the Department for its prompt clearance of relevant files for our purposes. These files were a goldmine of information on the Infectious Diseases Hospital, and have proved crucial to the descriptions of the early Hospital. Finally, there are the people who put up with me: my parents, whose love of me has always been essential to my achieving anything at all, and in my mother's case it took the form of proof-reading a draft of the manuscript; my friends, especially Helen Vella Bonavita, who had already borne with me through my doctoral thesis and had vowed 'never again'; the staff at the University of Western Australia's History Department, most of whom have taught me at some stage, especially Dr Philippa Maddern, who let me loose as a tutor in her own history course in 1994. And finally, I must thank the late Dr Derek Dawes, who patiently endured all demands for office support and iii liasion with the current RP(R)H administration, and to Colin Xanthus, who succeeded him in this task. It saddens me that Sir George was unable to see the completion of this book which he so longed to see written, and I hope that it is a worthy testament to his own committed and groundbreaking work at the Hospital. But this book is also a testament to the thousands of nursing staff, medical officers and patients who endured what were often trying and appalling conditions at the Infectious Diseases Hospital,