Catalogue description Records of the Women's Hospital, Catharine Street

ADMINISTRATIVE

1. Committee of Management Minute Books 7 vols., 1883-1932

2. House Committee Minute Books 4 vols., 1936 - 1940, 1955 - 1966

3. Lady Visitors' Meetings Minute Books 1 vol., 1898 - 1932

4. Medical Board Minute Books 3 vols., 1883 - 1972

5. Annual Reports 1 vol., 5 pamphlets, 1885 - 1906, 1918 - 1923

6. Miscellaneous financial records 14 vols., 1 file, 1 bundle, 1887 - 1971

CLINICAL

7. Case Notes - Abdominal Sections 24 vols., 1887 - 1902, 1904 - 1919

8. Case Notes - Dilatations, Curettings and General Diseases 11 vols., 1907 - 1913, 1915 - 1918

9. Case Notes - General Diseases 4 vols., 1890 - 1900, 1903 - 1907

10. Case Notes - "Hospital Cases" 4 vols., 1898 - 1903

11. Case Notes - Vaginal Hysterectomy (Vaginal Sections: Enulceation and Hysterectomy) 15 vols., c. 1895 - 1918

12. Case Notes - Various 14 vols., 1887 - 1906

13. Case Sheets - "Dr. Wallace" 4 bundles, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1912

14. Case Sheets - "Dr. Gemmell and Dr. Jeffcoate" 2 bundles, 1 folder, 1935 - 1941

15. Drugs Registers 3 vols., 1957 - 1963

16. Operations Registers 24 vols., 1918 - 1951

Operations Registers, 11 vols., 1918 - 1940

Operations Registers distinguished by Ward or Surgeon, 4 vols., 1918 - 1935

"Record of Operations", 2 vols., 1929 - 1935

Theatre Operations Books (?Theatre One) 7 vols., 1932 - 1951

17. Patients' Registers 22 vols., 1870 - 1880, 1896 - 1967

In-patients' Registers, 10 vols., 1929

Out-patients' Registers, 3 vols., 1932, 1955 - 1956

Registers of Deaths, 2 vols., 1896 - 1966

Miscellaneous registers, 4 vols., 1870 - 1880, 1934 - 1947

Details relating to the establishment of the Women's Hospital can be found in the following:

E.W. Hope Hospital for Women, Shaw Street in Handbook compiled for the Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health, 1903, pp. 65, 66

Liverpool Review, 1883

6 Jan., [p. illegible] Hospital Tinkering

13 Jan., p. 9 A Special Need

10 Feb., p. 4 A Failure of Charity

10 Mar., p. 10 The Hospital for Women

12 May, p. 4 Hospital for Women

Women's Hospital, Catharina Street, Liverpool

Some of the records in this collection contain sensitive personal information. Those records containing the sensitive personal data information of children or the health records of adults are not available for public inspection for 100 years. This is in accordance with Section 1 (Principles 1, 2 and 7) of the Data Protection Act 1998. Permission to consult closed patient records must be obtained from the Legal Services Manager, Liverpool Obstetrics and Gynaecology Services NHS Trust, Liverpool Women's Hospital, Crown Street, Liverpool, L8 7 SS. All other records in this collection are open to any accredited reader.

Deposited by Mr. J. Lyon, Administrator, Women's Hospital, Catharine Street, Liverpool L8 8NJ in November 1979. Acc. 3352

• Liverpool
• Health services

In and after the year 1879 the Ladies' Charity and Lying-In Hospital (later to become the Liverpool Maternity Hospital, see introductory notes to the list of Maternity Hospital records (614 MAT), encountered problems which made necessary the separation of its gynaecological and maternity functions. After much dispute the decision was made that a newly-projected Lying-In Hospital should treat maternity cases only (see T.H. Bickerton A Medical History of Liverpool ... to the year 1920, 1936, pp. 220 - 221). The result of this decision was to leave "... the case of special diseases of women and dispensary patients altogether unprovided for ..." and "... the total exclusion from hospital treatment of some thousands of poor women whose need for its was of the most imperative character". By January 1883 a Committee had been formed and fund raising begun towards setting up a Special Hospital for Women. The Liverpool Review, 13th January 1883 in A Special Need, p. 9, gives its view that the Special Hospital for Women "... is not strictly speaking a new institution. It undertakes the more expensive and arduous half of the work of the Lying-in Hospital and Ladies' Charity, Myrtle Street, which the latter found itself incompetent to continue ..." The first care of the new Hospital should be the provision of accommodation for cases needing "operative treatment" and energetic efforts should be made to raise more funds for it - "To ladies especially the case ought to commend itself ... we have too high an opinion of the ladies of Liverpool to believe that any false notions of mistaken delicacy will be allowed to interfere with their interest in the work ..." By 10th March 1883 the Liverpool Review is reporting that contributions for "... the Special Hospital for Women are beginning to flow in more rapidly" and by 12th May that although "£10,000 is the amount required to place the charity on a satisfactory basis" the Special Hospital for Women, an "... excellent and sorely-needed charity is at length ... in a position to commence operations. Over £5,000 has been raised and very desirable premises have been secured in Shaw Street, Nos. 107 and 109 where the accommodation is said to be ample, the rooms large & lofty and the sanitary arrangements all that could be desired". The Special Hospital for Women in Shaw Street was opened on 10th August 1883 by the Countess of Sefton.

On 14th October 1926 the foundation stone of a new hospital building in Catharine Street was laid by the Lady Mayoress of Liverpool. The new building was to house the amalgamation of the Women's Hospital, Shaw Street with the Samaritan Hospital for Women, Upper Parliament Street. The latter hospital had been opened in 1895 in Upper Warwick Street and had operated at various addresses until 1900 when it settled at premises in Upper Parliament Street (see Bickerton op. cit. pp 245, 246). In the early 1920's, certainly in 1923 and 1924 see Women's Hospital Committee of Management minute books, 1914 - 1923, 1923 - 1931, 614 WOM 1/5, 1/6) amalgamation discussions between the two hospitals were at an advanced stage and the new Women's Hospital in Catharine Street (the present building), at first known as the Liverpool and Samaritan Hospital for Women, was opened on 21st June 1932 by the Duchess of York.

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