![]() ‘We arrived at Bristol Station about 2 a. The sick and wounded soldiers would arrive by ship into Avonmouth and then travel by train to Bristol Temple Meads, often arriving in the dark in order not to reduce morale in the general population. You can see the Australian hat in many of the photographs of soldiers at the Hospital. The authorities tried to send men needing treatment as near to their own homes as possible, so many of the soldiers would have been local, however their was also a huge contingent of Australians and Canadians. Over the four years,Ģ9,433 patients were admitted and 164 deaths recorded, of which 30 were civilian emergencies from the influenza epidemic of 1918. The first convoy of wounded was received on May 24th 1915 and the Military Hospital closed in February 1919. Thirty beds were reserved for mental cases among local troops and in 1917 a ward of ten beds was established for cases of sickness among the German prisoners of war in the labour camps near Bristol. Sometimes as many as six were working there at once. Captain Moore from New Zealand and Captain Wace from British Columbia joined the staff, and soon a constant stream of American surgeons passed through the centre at Bristol to learn the work before joining up for service overseas or being put in charge of similar hospitals in America. Men from distant parts of the world came to study the methods. Five hundred beds, including twenty for officers, were allotted for the orthopaedic cases. In the summer of 1916, Beaufort War Hospital became an Orthopaedic Centre for the district. The greatest number of patients sleeping under the roof of the Beaufort War Hospital on one night was 1,487. In addition, the Duke of Beaufort consented to his name being given to the hospital. Corridors were refurbished to cope with emergency admissions, and two operating theatres were constructed of corrugated iron lined with patent plaster. The day rooms and the twenty-four night wards became medical and surgical wards. ![]() The Female Infirmary block at the workhouse situated next to the asylum, was cleared and lent as a home for the sisters and nurses. They were fondly nicknamed ‘Very Adorable Darlings’. These women trained in preliminary first aid and nursing skills were as a group very much defined by being middle or upper middle-class young women, three quarters of whom had never had any paid employment. By 1916, the trained nursing staff had been so depleted by drafts being sent overseas that members of Voluntary Aid Detachments(V.A.D.) were brought in. Gibson as Matron and the War Office supplied sisters and nurses from Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Staff Reserve. The nursing staff, all female were brought in. Blachford, Medical Superintendent of the asylum, was appointed Lieut.-Colonel, Commanding Officer. Another one thinks he is an electric battery… ‘ĭr. The lunatics are good workers and one persists in saluting us and always with the wrong hand. But I still feel the necessity of this war, and I have seen some sights, but not what one might expect. It was a splendid test of my feelings about this war. They were joined by other men, including the artist Stanley Spencer who spent a year as an orderly at the Hospital and later depicted scenes of life there in many of the panels at Sandham Memorial Chapel in Hampshire. The male mentally trained attendants who had not been called up for military service were retained as orderlies. The female mentally trained nurses who had no general nurse training served as auxiliary nurses. The remaining 931 patients were sent to other asylums in the West, including Dorset, Wilts, the Somerset asylums at Wells and Cotford, Devon, Exeter, Plymouth, and Cornwall. &c., no fewer than 11,046 wounded soldiers had been handled.’Ĭhairman’s report Bristol Branch Executive Committee of the British Red Cross Society, Western Daily Press, Fr iday 30 April 1915įorty-five male patients remained to work on the grounds, in the hospital departments and shops. ‘The total number of sick and wounded received in Bristol to date amounted to 6,247 cases, and including transfers to subsidiary hospitals. In 1915 when the other Bristol hospitals could not cope with the increasing influx of casualties, Bristol Lunatic Asylum (Glenside Hospital) was converted at War Office expense into a military hospital with 1,460 beds ‘for the general medical and surgical treatment of sick and wounded soldiers.’ We are currently researching and collecting individual stories to shed light on what it must have been like. Immediately one wants to know, who they were, what had happened to them, and where they came from. There is also a collection of photographs and postcards showing soldiers in wards, in the grounds, posing with friends and medical staff, individual portraits, summer fetes, plays, musicals. At Glenside Hospital Museum we have artifacts from the period including two Thomas Splints and thee stretchers.
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